Vista doesn't wake up during S3-S0 cycle test

[lilyar]

Hi Passmark,

I was running sleeper.exe to do S0-S3 power cycle test on Vista. At the same time, the computer was running many stressful programs. Sometimes the machine could not wake up after going to sleep. I need to move the mouse or click the keyboard to wake it up.

I was wondering how sleeper.exe wakes up the computer. I was thinking sleeper.exe programs the RTC (Real Time Clock) to wake up the machine in a future time (such as current_time + sleep_time). So I suspect the non-auto-wakeup problem may be because
(1) sleeper.exe programs the RTC to a future time
(2) sleeper.exe tries to put the machine to S3 state
(3) machine is too busy with other stressful tests so it takes a long time to go to sleep
(4) previously programmed RTC time already expires before the machine goes to sleep.
(5) machine never wakes up

Is it possible? Or could you let me know what might be the reason?

Thanks.

Lilyar

[David (PassMark)]

Yes, you can get a situation that if you set wake up times in the very near future, then the machine can still be trying to get to sleep when the wake signal arrives.

The solution is to set a wake up time at least several minutes into the future.