Windows 7 won't sleep with Firefox open

PogMoThoin

Young fellas gaming PC is set to sleep after 20 mins of inactivity but it fails to sleep when Firefox is open. He often falls asleep watching or listening to music on Youtube. Any ideas?

Fysh

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Young fellas gaming PC is set to sleep after 20 mins of inactivity but it fails to sleep when Firefox is open. He often falls asleep watching or listening to music on Youtube. Any ideas?

The problem there is likely to be the flash plugin, which opens as a separate process and will appear to be active regardless of user input or otherwise.

You could create a batch file to put the machine to sleep, then configure a scheduled task to run at some point where he's usually asleep so that if he's fallen asleep with it on, it'll sleep automatically: there's some suggestions on how to do it here. Also see the Microsoft FAQ on sleep & hibernation here.

PogMoThoin

Fysh wrote: »

The problem there is likely to be the flash plugin, which opens as a separate process and will appear to be active regardless of user input or otherwise.

You could create a batch file to put the machine to sleep, then configure a scheduled task to run at some point where he's usually asleep so that if he's fallen asleep with it on, it'll sleep automatically: there's some suggestions on how to do it here. Also see the Microsoft FAQ on sleep & hibernation here.

Thanks Fysh. It's not just at night I want it to sleep, I'd like it to sleep anytime he's away for more than 20 mins as it is heavy on power with its 600W psu and hungry gpu. It used be my home server but now I've invested in something low power I need this one to sleep but it's not working out. Sign of the times when a 14yo doesn't have a single CD, but listens to all his music through YouTube

Fysh

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Thanks Fysh. It's not just at night I want it to sleep, I'd like it to sleep anytime he's away for more than 20 mins as it is heavy on power with its 600W psu and hungry gpu. It used be my home server but now I've invested in something low power I need this one to sleep but it's not working out. Sign of the times when a 14yo doesn't have a single CD, but listens to all his music through YouTube

Please don't take this as me being rude, but would it not be easier to teach him not to leave it on when he's not using it? The nature of the playback mechanism he's using means that auto-shutdown is going to be fiddly, and the problem's user-related rather than process-related any way.

You could maybe try using Parental Controls to limit how long he can use it per day. That'll certainly give him an incentive not to leave it on when he's not using it!

PogMoThoin

Fysh wrote: »

Please don't take this as me being rude, but would it not be easier to teach him not to leave it on when he's not using it? The nature of the playback mechanism he's using means that auto-shutdown is going to be fiddly, and the problem's user-related rather than process-related any way.

You could maybe try using Parental Controls to limit how long he can use it per day. That'll certainly give him an incentive not to leave it on when he's not using it!

No, parental control isn't the issue and isn't the route I'd like to go down, I don't really restrict his usage at all as it doesn't affect his school grades. He's actually doing his bit, he does put it to sleep when it's not in use but once or twice he's ran out in the morning in a hurry thinking he'd put it to sleep but it didn't work as flash was running and came home to find it still on. The main issue is at night with music. I suppose that batch file shut down would work.

Overheal

Batch file snooze timer seems good, kind of like tvs used to have, you could set it in 15min increments in this case just leave it like an hour or something.

CptSternn

Try Chrome!

Fysh

I would guess that the big thing determining whether Chrome is a suitable solution will be whether he's using firefox add-ons. I haven't checked for a while but last time I looked Chrome's Add-on marketplace was rubbish compared to Firefox's.

If you want to try the batch file but make it more expandable, you could use a more complicated version that shows a prompt asking for user input and sleeps/hibernates/shuts down if no input is forthcoming. See here for some implementation examples.