Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

1.5K

when my computer is inactive for approximately five minutes, the screen blacks out, every so often, when I return to my computer with the screen in this state, moving my mouse does not cause the screen to activate again, and I have to activate it by hitting the power button on my computer, however, sometimes this starts to shut my computer down, and when that happens, I lose my saved information that I was working on, this really upsets me, as I often write long posts that take a lot of think work on the part of concepts conveyed and the words used to describe them to the reader.

I really hate this situation, how to fix it? do I need a new computer or a new OS? I do not have a lot of money.

when my computer is inactive for approximately five minutes, the screen blacks out, every so often, when I return to my computer with the screen in this state, moving my mouse does not cause the screen to activate again, and I have to activate it by hitting the power button on my computer, however, sometimes this starts to shut my computer down, and when that happens, I lose my saved information that I was working on, this really upsets me, as I often write long posts that take a lot of think work on the part of concepts conveyed and the words used to describe them to the reader. I really hate this situation, how to fix it? do I need a new computer or a new OS? I do not have a lot of money.

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (17).
[–] [deleted] • 2 pts (edited )

Go to your start menu and in the search field type "power" or "sleep" - you should see power options listed as a search result.

Go there, look for a way to change your current power plan ("advanced power options")

When your computer is idle for X minutes, it shuts the monitor off

When your computer is idle for X minutes, it may stop power down the hard drives to save them from idle work.

When your computer is idle for X+X minutes, it goes to sleep

When your computer is idle for X+X+X minutes, it may go into hibernation

When the monitor is shut off, mouse movent or key press will bring it back

When computer is in sleep or hibernate, these states can be configured to allow wake by mouse/key or by power button.

Check these variables and change them INCLUDING the length of idle time before computer commits to one of these actions.

You can also tell it to NEVER sleep or hibernate, which may just solve your issue.

[–] • 1 pt

Illuminalto has definitely stated the correct answer.

at first, the computer just shuts off the monitor then it will go to sleep then it will hibernate.

just set the Power settings to never hibernate.

[–] • 0 pt

Great explanation, and I'd like to add my suggestion to it, which galabad71 mentioned.

If this is a custom-built desktop (as opposed to a pre-built), turn off any and all settings related to sleep and hibernate (and set counters to 0 which disables them). I've never had sleep or hibernate work well with custom PCs, there's always been some edge case which causes grief.