Laptop randomly waking up = Hibernate / Low Battery?

At the risk of looking stupid, I found the following:

I also had the same problem. I never shut down my laptop, I always put it into sleep mode, and it would wake up unexpectedly in the middle of the night. I discovered that this "S4 Doze to Hibernate" event is not a bug, it's a feature. Go to power advanced settings and change "hibernate after" under "sleep" drop down menu:

enter image description here>

Choose how long you want to wait before going to hibernate from sleep mode. I set mine to 1440 minutes (24 hours) which is enough for staying overnight.

By the way, also check you don't have anything under "allow wake timers".

I don't see that you say you've tried this, so if I missed you pointing it out, I apologize for wasting your time.


SleepWakeSolution

This is a solution for those who want their computers to never wake from sleep on their own anymore and simpler solutions have not worked. Nothing other than tapping a button or opening the cover will wake it. Not the planned tasks which are scheduled to wake up your system such as Windows Media Center or the unknown causes. The only negative I’ve found is that a laptop will not wake to hibernate if the battery is getting too low. It will just go dead and any unsaved information will be lost.

Open a command-prompt and run the following commands:

powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d 0
powercfg -setdcvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d 0
powercfg -setactive scheme_current

These can be copied and pasted into the command prompt by clicking on the header/edit/paste at the top of the command prompt window.

This changes the default values for the current power scheme and stops the machine from being woken from sleep.

Applies to following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\BD3B718A-0680-4D9D-8AB2-E1D2B4AC806D
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e\238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20\bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\BD3B718A-0680-4D9D-8AB2-E1D2B4AC806D
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e\238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20\bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\BD3B718A-0680-4D9D-8AB2-E1D2B4AC806D
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e\238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20\bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d

The above has been tested to work in Win7 and Win8. It modified the SKUACSettingIndex to a 0 from a 1 in Win8 under all the above categories during the test, which could also be done manually through regedit as an alternative. This enables a power scheme with the ability to wake from sleep completely disabled. Again, the only negative I have found is that a laptop will not wake to hibernate if the battery is getting too low. It will just go dead.

Important: The additional step of going to Control Panel / Power Options, and then resetting the current power scheme to the default values under advanced settings may also be necessary after implementing the config changes. The user can then readjust things back to their own preferences.

During my command-prompt test on a new Win8 system, it appears to have reset the power settings to default since things again have their default time-out settings after using the command-prompt solution. There have also not been any wakes reported during the test period in Event Viewer /system.

I also reviewed the Event Viewer on two other systems, and there have not been any wakes on those systems since I implemented the Command Prompt solution on them two weeks ago.

To return the defaults to the original values, enter the same command-prompt lines but enter a 1 for the last character instead of a 0. Then change the current power scheme back to default values in Power Options.

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19\Control Panel\PowerCfg - This lists the current Power Policy.