So you love the Windows Vista (and Windows 7) sleep mode but somehow your machine wakes up from the sleep by itself? It is an annoying problem and usually happens the first time you try the Sleep feature on Windows Vista/Windows 7.
Here are some details on what you should check to fix Windows 7 sleep from waking up automatically.
Prevent your Network Card to wake your Windows Vista/7 up from its sleep
Check your network card properties through the device manager and disable the “Allow this devide to wake the computer” feature.
- Right click on your “My Computer” then select Properties.
- Click Device Manager on the left side of the Properties window.
- Check your Network card on the Network Adapters (Click on the + sign to expand).
- Right click on your network card and select properties.
- Go to the Power Management tab and untick the option there to prevent your network card from ever waking up your Windows.
Find out what wakes up your Windows 7/Vista from its sleep
To find out what event/device woke up your Windows from its sleep state, go to command prompt (type cmd on the Run/Search box and press ENTER), then type this:
powercfg – lastwake
To get the most detailed info (and probably easiest) on the device that wakes your Windows up during the sleep, type:
powercfg –devicequery wake_armed
There! You’ll find the culprit 
I clicked my mouse to wake my Windows up intentionally so that’s why you see an HID compliant mouse on the screenshot above. Yours might be different.
Hope this helps!
If it still doesn’t work:
- Check out your Power Management Options on your Control Panel (Start, Control Panel, Power Settings, Change plan settings, Change advanced power settings).
-> “Multimedia settings” option, “When sharing media.” ->”Allow the computer to sleep.
-> Check other options one by one while you’re at it.
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Thanks for this tip. It worked for me. However, my laptop running latest win7 Pro is waking up at night from sleep/hibernation. Every night it seems. I made sure I checked again in Device Manager that no device can wake up the computer. This morning I checked what caused the wakeup and here’s what I have. I cannot understand it given that I do not appear to have Media Center.
C:\Users\chait>powercfg -lastwake
Wake History Count – 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count – 1
Wake Source [0]
Type: Wake Timer
Owner: [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Windows\System32\services.exe
Owner Supplied Reason: Windows will execute ‘\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center
\mcupdate_scheduled’ scheduled task that requested waking the computer.
Thanks in advance. -yc
Good news. I found the problem. Media center…see solution here:
http://www.beirtech.com/blogs.php?action=view&bid=6.
Ihave different problem: Win7 went to sleep, now it won’t wakeup: it goes thru bootup, I see the 4 colored banner, “Starting Windows”….and then…black screen, pure black…but: I have an active working cursor. But that’s it: no startup, can’t access programs, not thru safe mode, not with Repair disk ……alternate seems to be reload all (custom erases all programs and data!)…and upgrade did not work. ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS?????HELP!!
Eric inGraton CA.
Did you try to take RAM out and put it back in???
i wonder why it does that, i mean…if you didn’t set it up to wake up by itself then why is it waking up, didn’t i put you to sleep lolz
Did you check BIOS????
When I writed in CMD powercfg -lastwake it write me back that is the mouse,
I fix that and do it agen it looks like “nothing didn’t wake the computer
Please help and sorry for my bad english
Thanks, my PC sometimes opens by itself at like 3am and waking me up.
My computer sleeps fine, but has been waking apparently randomly for some time now. I have worked out that this must be due to some power surges or something; as it wakes up when I turn my desk light, or my desk fan off or on!!! The computer is in a surge protected socket, (with the light, but the fan is on a seperate socket). Any ideas if/how I can fix this?
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