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The most annoying one is that Windows machines have lost the ability for deep sleep. Laptops that slept perfectly 5 years ago are now left as 24/7 zombies, with

The most annoying one is that Windows machines have lost the ability for deep sleep. Laptops that slept perfectly 5 years ago are now left as 24/7 zombies, with the CPU, fans and hard disks running non stop. I'm certain that some idiotic change just like the ones suggested in the article destroyed this perfectly working feature, and nobody is bothered to fix it because it would impact the latest harebrained scheme to make my 10 year laptop do AI in its sleep and suggest helpful ads about the things it couldn't help overhear while "sleeping".

lewantmontreal 1y ago
They do have some sort of sleep but its very inefficient so Lenovo Thinkpads actually go into hibernation after an hour or so of sleep, to avoid the user waking up to an empty battery.
- bartread 1y ago
  This has given me flashbacks. I went down this rabbit hole prepandemic with a Dell laptop I had for work at the time. I got tired of getting on the train to find my laptop dead. Back then Windows would default to a crap version of sleep but you could still disable it in the BIOS and by tweaking a couple of other settings, thus forcing it to use proper sleep. I’m pretty sure I wrote a lengthy response on HN about this including the specifics at the time. That worked well until I got a new Dell laptop that removed support for the good sleep mode entirely. So then I’d make sure to always leave the machine plugged in and switched on overnight before any travel… which is how I discovered that the machine had a bug where sometimes it would fail to charge whilst plugged in and switched on but not awake, so occasionally I’d still end up with a dead laptop on the train. So then I’d start up the machine as soon as I got out of bed so it’d get at least 30 - 45 minutes of charging with not much load on it whilst I was getting ready to leave. I absolutely hate Dell. For my own use I’ve been buying Apple laptops since 2011 and, although they went through a grim period meaning I kept a machine from 2015 to 2024, I never had this sort of nonsense with them.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    I like PC laptops. But only the business line, so that you get sensible admin options and good hardware.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Izkata 1y ago
  On Windows, at least when it was first introduced to consumers, "Sleep" was the name of that suspend/hibernate combination. Before that you had both options "Stand By" (suspend without hibernate) and "Hibernate" in the shutdown menu.
Moru 1y ago
I have never had a windows computer that was able to do any sort of sleep without crashing, either in the sleep mode or randomly a time after waking up. First thing I do is disable it, I have lost enough time trying to find the cause of it and the crashes usually stop if I don't use sleep modes. Most of my computers and friends computers have been ASUS though, maybe that is a connection. (Windows user since 3.11 but I don't think those had sleep modes :-)
- wsc981 1y ago
  I believe Asus used to produce MacBook's for a long time (probably not anymore, but I'm quite sure about the white G3 / G4 MacBooks - and sleep always worked fine on those machines. It can't just be the hardware, I think.
- p_ing 1y ago
  ACPI implementations have been terrible for a very long time, ASUS is no exception. This is where a good portion of sleep-related issues stem from. The other side is garbage drivers. I have a joystick from Virpil, which has it's own drivers (extensible configuration) that prevented sleep. That said, if I remove the joystick from the picture, my ASUS-based Am4 system sleeps just fine.
  - anonymars 1y ago
    It might be due to phantom/imperceptible input. I have this with a bunch of similar flight sim peripherals. I ended up getting one of those USB hubs with switches to disable the ports. That was a saga in itself: it had a firmware issue where 3 of the 7 ports didn't work right. Apparently it's two 4-port hubs in a trenchcoat. They had a firmware update but apparently it had a virus in the loader app so they pulled it, you needed to contact support to get the new firmware. Their support insisted on sending me a replacement hub instead, which of course didn't work. And then a second time, I'm pretty sure, and only then did they send me a new firmware update which solved the issue. Well. Anyway. Those hubs are theoretically good so you can avoid the wear on the USB connectors. But I guess the theme of bad QA is a common one. This wasn't an Amazon alphabet soup brand Chinese special, either.
Peanuts99 1y ago
I'd be willing to bet this is more to do with chipset drivers and associated software than Windows itself.
- cornholio 1y ago
  You may lose that bet. Nobody is writing or pushing driver updates for 10 year old hardware, yet Microsoft's strategy to cripple S3 sleep to compete with mobile OSes is well documented, with the, again, widely documented effect of setting on fire laptops their owners believed were "shut down".
  - smittywerben 1y ago
    Hell even today in 2025 I installed my Wacom tablet drivers (USB drawing tablet) and the installer says "You must restart your system... Note: Shut down is not the same as Restart", like what does that even mean? It's a classic Microsoft move I'd say.
    - cornholio 1y ago
      Well, Windows computers have a prominent button that evolved from the ATX shutdown button that actually used to turn off energy completely, but the button has been long since hijacked to do all sort of fancy sleep gymnastics; there is no other "shutdown" button that the user can operate. So I can definitely see why a driver installer is very nervous about people "shutting down" their devices to reload the system. Why would a full restart be required in the 3rd millennium to load a driver for an USB input device is of course another Microsoft philosophical moment.
oblio 1y ago
I just use hibernate instead. Marginally longer start up time and no more worries. For shorter periods I just leave it on (like when taking the laptop to a meeting room).
- Vilian 1y ago
  Hibernate is a lot harder to make work correctly, and can lead to problems in more niche cases, so it's not a guarantee
  - 7bit 1y ago
    Huh? I have enabled that on hundreds of installations in the past and have yet to see an issue. It's neither hard nor does it lead to issues more than standby does. (Even less, from my XP)
voidUpdate 1y ago
Windows kept waking up my old laptop at random times, draining the battery. Which lead to some embarrassment when I had replaced the default sounds with a comedy portal pack, and my backpack randomly yelled that the core temperature was critical when the battery nearly died
InDubioProRubio 1y ago
Somewhere, there is some intern commented out test for this feature.

lewantmontreal 1y ago

They do have some sort of sleep but its very inefficient so Lenovo Thinkpads actually go into hibernation after an hour or so of sleep, to avoid the user waking up to an empty battery.

bartread 1y ago
This has given me flashbacks. I went down this rabbit hole prepandemic with a Dell laptop I had for work at the time. I got tired of getting on the train to find my laptop dead. Back then Windows would default to a crap version of sleep but you could still disable it in the BIOS and by tweaking a couple of other settings, thus forcing it to use proper sleep. I’m pretty sure I wrote a lengthy response on HN about this including the specifics at the time. That worked well until I got a new Dell laptop that removed support for the good sleep mode entirely. So then I’d make sure to always leave the machine plugged in and switched on overnight before any travel… which is how I discovered that the machine had a bug where sometimes it would fail to charge whilst plugged in and switched on but not awake, so occasionally I’d still end up with a dead laptop on the train. So then I’d start up the machine as soon as I got out of bed so it’d get at least 30 - 45 minutes of charging with not much load on it whilst I was getting ready to leave. I absolutely hate Dell. For my own use I’ve been buying Apple laptops since 2011 and, although they went through a grim period meaning I kept a machine from 2015 to 2024, I never had this sort of nonsense with them.
- skydhash 1y ago
  I like PC laptops. But only the business line, so that you get sensible admin options and good hardware.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Izkata 1y ago
On Windows, at least when it was first introduced to consumers, "Sleep" was the name of that suspend/hibernate combination. Before that you had both options "Stand By" (suspend without hibernate) and "Hibernate" in the shutdown menu.

Moru 1y ago

I have never had a windows computer that was able to do any sort of sleep without crashing, either in the sleep mode or randomly a time after waking up. First thing I do is disable it, I have lost enough time trying to find the cause of it and the crashes usually stop if I don't use sleep modes. Most of my computers and friends computers have been ASUS though, maybe that is a connection. (Windows user since 3.11 but I don't think those had sleep modes :-)

wsc981 1y ago
I believe Asus used to produce MacBook's for a long time (probably not anymore, but I'm quite sure about the white G3 / G4 MacBooks - and sleep always worked fine on those machines. It can't just be the hardware, I think.
p_ing 1y ago
ACPI implementations have been terrible for a very long time, ASUS is no exception. This is where a good portion of sleep-related issues stem from. The other side is garbage drivers. I have a joystick from Virpil, which has it's own drivers (extensible configuration) that prevented sleep. That said, if I remove the joystick from the picture, my ASUS-based Am4 system sleeps just fine.
- anonymars 1y ago
  It might be due to phantom/imperceptible input. I have this with a bunch of similar flight sim peripherals. I ended up getting one of those USB hubs with switches to disable the ports. That was a saga in itself: it had a firmware issue where 3 of the 7 ports didn't work right. Apparently it's two 4-port hubs in a trenchcoat. They had a firmware update but apparently it had a virus in the loader app so they pulled it, you needed to contact support to get the new firmware. Their support insisted on sending me a replacement hub instead, which of course didn't work. And then a second time, I'm pretty sure, and only then did they send me a new firmware update which solved the issue. Well. Anyway. Those hubs are theoretically good so you can avoid the wear on the USB connectors. But I guess the theme of bad QA is a common one. This wasn't an Amazon alphabet soup brand Chinese special, either.

Peanuts99 1y ago

I'd be willing to bet this is more to do with chipset drivers and associated software than Windows itself.

cornholio 1y ago
You may lose that bet. Nobody is writing or pushing driver updates for 10 year old hardware, yet Microsoft's strategy to cripple S3 sleep to compete with mobile OSes is well documented, with the, again, widely documented effect of setting on fire laptops their owners believed were "shut down".
- smittywerben 1y ago
  Hell even today in 2025 I installed my Wacom tablet drivers (USB drawing tablet) and the installer says "You must restart your system... Note: Shut down is not the same as Restart", like what does that even mean? It's a classic Microsoft move I'd say.
  - cornholio 1y ago
    Well, Windows computers have a prominent button that evolved from the ATX shutdown button that actually used to turn off energy completely, but the button has been long since hijacked to do all sort of fancy sleep gymnastics; there is no other "shutdown" button that the user can operate. So I can definitely see why a driver installer is very nervous about people "shutting down" their devices to reload the system. Why would a full restart be required in the 3rd millennium to load a driver for an USB input device is of course another Microsoft philosophical moment.

oblio 1y ago

I just use hibernate instead. Marginally longer start up time and no more worries. For shorter periods I just leave it on (like when taking the laptop to a meeting room).

Vilian 1y ago
Hibernate is a lot harder to make work correctly, and can lead to problems in more niche cases, so it's not a guarantee
- 7bit 1y ago
  Huh? I have enabled that on hundreds of installations in the past and have yet to see an issue. It's neither hard nor does it lead to issues more than standby does. (Even less, from my XP)

voidUpdate 1y ago

Windows kept waking up my old laptop at random times, draining the battery. Which lead to some embarrassment when I had replaced the default sounds with a comedy portal pack, and my backpack randomly yelled that the core temperature was critical when the battery nearly died

InDubioProRubio 1y ago

Somewhere, there is some intern commented out test for this feature.