Just in thinking!: How to Change the Return to Sleep Timeout for a Unattended Wake Up in Windows 7

How to Change the Return to Sleep Timeout for a Unattended Wake Up in Windows 7

Information

This will show you how to change how long Windows 7 will wait unattended and idle after waking up before going back to sleep or hibernation automatically. The default time is 120 seconds (2 minutes).

Tip

Adjusting this wait timeout period can also be handy if you had a task in Task Scheduler set to wake up the computer to run something. You could set this wait timeout period to be long enough for the task to have time to finish running before Windows 7 went back to sleep automatically.

Note

If the computer wakes up from sleep mode and is used by you (no longer idle) during this default timeout period, then Windows 7 will not go back to sleep mode automatically after this timeout period. Instead it will use the time period you set in your Power Plan Settings for Sleep or Hibernation.
This will also affect how long you have to enter your user account password if you have enabled the Require a Password on wakeup option.

Warning

You can only do this while logged into an administrator account.

Here's How:

1. Open the Start Menu, then type regedit in the search line and press enter.

2. If prompted by UAC, then click on OK.

3. In regedit, navigate to the location below: (See screenshot below)

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0\DefaultPowerSchemeValues

4. In the left pane of regedit, click on the triangle to expand DefaultPowerSchemeValues key (folder). (See screenshot above)

5. Click on the key (see table in tip below) that is for the Power Plan that you want to change the default wait time for. (See screenshot above)
NOTE: Normally, you would just do this for the Power Plan that you have selected (see tip below). If you have more than one user, then you may also want to include their Power Plan, or all of them.

Tip

Registry Key	Power Plan
381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e	Balanced
8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c	High performance
a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a	Power saver

NOTE: You will not be able to set the wait timeout period for a custom power plan. You can only do so with the default power plans.

6. In the right pane, right click on ACSettingIndex (for when you are on AC power) or DCSettingIndex (for when you are on battery power) and click on Modify. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: You can choose to do this with one or both of these options to set what you want the wait timeout period to be for them.

7. Dot Decimal, and type in how many seconds you want Windows 7 to wait before going back to sleep or hibernation automatically after an unattended wakeup. Click on OK. (See screenshots below)
NOTE: The default time is 120 seconds (2 minutes).