Why does my PC never wake up?
Q
My eight-year-old Windows 7 PC happily goes to sleep on command, but it won’t wake up again. I have to switch off the power at the mains, wait for a bit and then restart the PC. Do you know what’s causing this, and how I can fix it? Tony Carter
A
You didn’t say exactly how you’re trying to wake the computer from sleep, but we assume you’ve done all the obvious things – such as wobbling the mouse and pressing a button on the keyboard. Any of these methods should work, although some keyboards have a dedicated Sleep key: pressing this specifically might rouse your PC from its slumber.
Even so, you should be able to wake almost any Windows computer from sleep by tapping a key, moving the mouse (or swiping the touchpad) or clicking a mouse button. If it doesn’t respond to any of these inputs, open Device Manager to check that your mouse and keyboard are able to issue a ‘wake’ instruction. In Windows 10 or 11, you can access this through the Quick Link menu by pressing Windows key+x, but as you’re using Windows 7, press Windows key+r, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter (see screenshot ).
Next, in Device Manager, click to expand the Keyboards heading, then right-click your keyboard and choose Properties. Select the Power Management tab, then make sure ‘Allow this device to wake the computer’ is ticked ( ). If it isn’t, tick it, then click OK. Repeat this step for your mouse or touchpad, under the heading ‘Mice and other pointing devices’ in Device Manager.
If you can’t see this option, or it’s greyed out, you need to access your PC’S BIOS or UEFI to enable it. We don’t know which PC you have, but generally you access the BIOS by pressing one of a handful of keys just after switching on – typically F2, F8, F12 or Delete (Del).
Use the arrow (cursor) and Enter keys to navigate the BIOS, looking for an option called something like ‘USB Wake Support’ or ‘USB Device Wake-up’ 3. Select this and change it to Enabled. Now press Escape (Esc) to exit the BIOS, selecting Yes or pressing Y to save the changes. Finally, return to Device Manager and repeat the steps above.