My problem was that I had corrupt files clogging the print spooler, and preventing my PC from sleeping. However, when I opened the ‘printers’ section of control panel, no jobs were queued. In my case, I had the print spooler claiming to be ‘printing a document’. This will show all of the different components that are preventing the PC from sleeping. Now run the ‘powercfg -requests’ command. The third and final check (in my case): Open an elevated command prompt (right-click a command prompt shortcut, and click ‘run as administrator’). On my PC, the ‘Allow the computer to sleep’ setting was checked, yet my computer still failed to sleep. The example below shows the settings for my network interface card (NIC). Most (if not all) configurable components need to be set to ‘Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power’. The second thing to check: The device manager allows for the power management of individual components. The multimedia power setting was already correctly set to allow my computer to sleep, but my PC still failed to sleep. It should be set to ‘allow the computer to sleep’. The example below shows the setting on another of my PCs (my media center PC) which runs 24/7. This setting can be found within the ‘advanced settings’ of your power options. The first thing to check: One of the ‘usual culprits’ that has traditionally prevented my PCs from sleeping over the years has been ‘when sharing media, prevent idling to sleep’ power setting. It should be sleeping after the pre-configured time of PC inactivity. However, lately I walk into my study after hours of inactivity and see the PC still powered on.

My basic power settings show a ‘balanced’ power plan, with the following settings:

My Windows 10 desktop used to go to sleep as expected.

Pc will not sleep windows 10