I have a full system scan scheduled to run daily and it has been working fine until recently when I noticed it will not start if the PC is asleep. Shortly after coming out of sleep mode the scheduled scan will start.
I'm on N360 ver 20.4.0.40 running win xp sp2.
Norton will not wake the computer from sleep to perform a scan. Some people use windows to wake the computer before the scan is due to start.
This has been working just fine for about 2 years. Anyway what do I need to do to "wake" the computer before the scan is to start.
I have a full system scan scheduled to run daily and it has been working fine until recently when I noticed it will not start if the PC is asleep. Shortly after coming out of sleep mode the scheduled scan will start.
I'm on N360 ver 20.4.0.40 running win xp sp2.
Hi 2YsUR
To find out how to wake the computer from sleep at a specific time try using help and support from the start menu or search the web.
ATB
intesec
2YsUR wrote:This has been working just fine for about 2 years. Anyway what do I need to do to "wake" the computer before the scan is to start.
There are several ways to do this. I use the "Task Scheduler" within Windows. I'm running WIndows 7 so I can't recall how Task Scheduler is set up with XP so there may be some differences that won't be applicable with Win 7.
I created a "Wake From Sleep" task, Here's some screencaps from my Task Scheduler for that task. Here are my screencaps from the tabs within the "Create Task" dialog:
Capture 2.PNG
With my trigger schedule, I have a daily (nightly) wakeup for my Norton 360 & MBAM unattended scans and a weekly wakeup for my external USB portable HDD.
I use the "cmd" in Windows to open a "cmd" window, then I just exit the cmd window without taking any action.
Just add the arguement /c exit .Here's the editing dialog box:
This should work to wake up a PC for unattended tasks.
With WIndows 7 though, there's a default "put PC back to sleep after 120 seconds of undected (interactive) activity" registry value so I had to edit that value in the Windows 7 Registry and increased my time to ~5 hrs. With Norton, it doesn't matter since Norton has the option in the pull-down menu ("Scans" section) to put the PC back to sleep when the scan completes. Great option imo :). Not all AV's have that option available in their products.
For info about how to edit the "Unattended Registry value in Windows 7, here's a link to a Vista forum. It's applicable for WIndows 7 as well. I'm not sure about XP with this.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/171042-sleep-return-timeout-unattended-wake-up.html
I've been running unattended overnight Norton 360 scans with a preceeding MBAM scan since I installed Norton in Dec '12 without problems using the Task Scheduler.
If there's a need to put the PC to sleep using Task Scheduler, you can do that too. I use that daily to put the PC back into Standby after a daily unattended incremental backup task.
Scoop8 thanks for the info. I will try to setup something similar in XP and see what happens.
2YsUR wrote:Scoop8 thanks for the info. I will try to setup something similar in XP and see what happens.
No problem :) Hope it works out for you with XP. I do recall a friend mentioning to me that he had some similar tasks set up on his older machine with XP.
Here's a couple of links that help with XP's Task Scheduler setup.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308569
This one's a YouTube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjwRPUf6RbI
The music's ok :lol: but I muted it anyway.
I did some searching about XP relating to the "unattended wake timeout" issue and there may not be a way to change the default 2-min "go back to sleep" timer. Here's one link that goes into some technical info about it:
Here's another forum where it goes into details about how to work around the issue with XP but it's looking to me like it may be difficult to prevent an XP machine from returning back to sleep after the 2-min default timer.
http://www.passmark.com/forum/showthread.php?1688-Sleeper-entering-S3-after-it-finishes/page2
It might be easier to leave your XP machine on 24/7 but that's probably not a desired preference.
I'm a big "put my PC's in Standby (sleep) mode" guy but I have a specific reason for that preference that's not related to the topic.
Since I'm running "Autohotkey", a freeware hotkey program, I mapped my <win> S key to run the Windows "Sleep" dll code.
Or, at the Desktop-active mode, you can call up the Windows "Shutdown" menu with Alt-F4, and select the Sleep option from that menu. I remapped my keybd to call that menu with <Win> x .
Scoop8, I did setup a task to wake up the pc 2 min before the full system scan is set to run. The wake up task ran but the full system scan did not run until much later when I got back on the pc. I will check out the links you posted and also modify the wake up task to start only 1 min before N360 is set to run.
Thanks again.
2YsUR wrote:Scoop8, I did setup a task to wake up the pc 2 min before the full system scan is set to run. The wake up task ran but the full system scan did not run until much later when I got back on the pc. I will check out the links you posted and also modify the wake up task to start only 1 min before N360 is set to run.
Thanks again.
Hi
Unfortunately, what I think happened is a result of XP not having a Registry value for modifying the sleep/timeout default setting in XP.
What I think happend is:
- Your XP Task Scheduler woke up your PC as requested from the task that you added into Task Scheduler.
- Since your PC received the unattended wake-up command, the default 2-min XP timer began the countdown and then put your PC back to sleep after 2 min since XP does not have the user option available, as with Vista and Windows 7, to lengthen that 2-min sleep timeout setting.
You may find a workaround but it may be easier to leave your PC on all the time, thereby allowing your unattended scans to complete.
There is one part of this that someone else may be able to answer:
Within the Norton Scan options, there is a box that you can check that will prevent your PC from going back to sleep after the Scan begins. This setting is in my Norton 360:
The "Prevent Standby" box is checked. I believe that's the option that will prevent (in Vista or Win 7) the PC from returning to Sleep while the Scan is running but I'm not sure if that option will work in XP since XP doesn't have the Registry value that's included in Vista/Win 7 that allows the user to change the 2-min default "return to sleep" timer.
I think one of the links that I included in the earlier post mentions one workaround in XP, where a user launched an App that prevents the PC from going to Sleep mode.
In that case, the PC would probably be set up to launch an App via Task Scheduler a few minutes before the user's unattended Scan is scheduled to begin. In that way, the XP PC will remain awake during the duration of the Norton Scan.
I found another link related to the XP/sleep issue:
http://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Automatic-Sleep-on-Windows-or-Mac
That may work for you.
Here's another forum page that may help:
It's looking like you may be able to get your XP PC to remain awake after launching your Task Scheduler Wakeup task.
From what I can see, reading these, it may be a matter of setting the Standby (Sleep) mode to "never" with all of your PC's user accounts. In other words, you may need to ensure that the setting as described in the first 2 links is set for the Administrator accounts.
That may get it solved if you ensure that your "Wakeup" Task in Task Scheduler is defined to launch as a Administrator.
However, it looks like the easiest way to insure that it will work is just to set all PC user accts to never go to sleep.
Here's what I'd try:
- Follow the directions in either of the 2 links to set up XP PC from Control Panel/Power Opttions, to set your PC to System Standby --> "never"
- When you're done for the day on your PC, put it to Sleep manually, I can't recall much about XP at present, but you should be able to select "Sleep" mode from the Start Menu or possibly the shortcut Windows "Shutdown" menu that I mentioned in a previous post.
- Your Task will launch overnight, waking up the PC a few minutes before your Norton Scan is scheduled to begin.
- If all works as the theory here, the PC will remain awake, even unattended during the Norton Scan, since you had previously set the "System Standby" setting to "never" from the Control Panel/Power Options setting.
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I recall when I was digging into this "sleep" stuff a year or so ago, it was interesting since there are certain requests in "Powercfg" (Windows 7), that will intermittently prevent a PC from going to sleep after the user leaves the PC unattended.
The PC is supposed to go into Sleep Mode after the time period defined in Conrol Panel/Power Options setting, but if the PC is receiving a "power request" signal from, say, another PC within one's Homegroup Network, then the PC will remain awake regardless of the timeout setting in Control Panel.
That's why I use my hotkey mapping to put my PC to sleep when I'm walking away from the PC. It's about the same as the <Win> L (lock PC) setting that a lot of users like to do when they're leaving the PC.
Just to be clear, my power settings: Turn off Hard Disks = Never, System Standby = Never, Hibernate = disabled. The only active setting is for the monitor to turn off after 45 minutes. Also, screen saver is set to come on after 20 minutes.
So it seems that whenever the monitor is off the Norton scan will not run. I will change that setting so the monitor is never turned off. The only thing that will happen is the screen saver after 20 minutes.
Good News! With the monitor not being allowed to turn off, the Norton scan ran as scheduled
2YsUR wrote:Good News! With the monitor not being allowed to turn off, the Norton scan ran as scheduled
That's great! Glad to see you got it working.
