The case of the waking laptop

My Sony Vaio Z - ah... bliss! This is a BRILLIANT laptop.

But it often wakes around 2am.

When on battery, it runs its battery down and starts hibernating.

But when its in my bag, the extra drain of running the fan at full speed in the bag (due to the heat in a closed bag) whilst it runs needlessly, means that the hibernation battery threshhold is not sufficient for a full hibernation to occur. (8GB of RAM takes a while to hibernate.)

Ergo, the battery drains, and I lose my software state and any unsaved work.

VERY frustrating, especially when it's supposedly the 21st century and all.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

I thought it must be the fault of a Sony driver or something.

But previous attempts to resolve the problem have failed.

I've had the laptop nearly four months now, and this has been my major issue with it.

(Lots of people are mentioning very similar problems, and other websites do give answers that work for others, but didn't solve the problem in my case.)

I think I've found the solution at last :

Open : Task Scheduler

Expand : Task Scheduler Library

Expand : Microsoft

Expand : Windows

Select in the LHS tree : Media Center

Select in the RHS list : mcupdate_scheduled

Note that it defaults to 2am daily. 2am daily!

Right-click "mcupdate_scheduled" and select "Properties".

Go to the fourth tab, and find the checkbox named "Wake the computer to run this task".

It is checked.

Yes, can you believe it, checked.

This particular scheduled task just checks for software updates.

That's not very critical.

Some numbskull at Microsoft decided that Media Center software updates are so critical that your computer should be woken from sleep at 2am, EVERY DAY!!!

This explains another problem. Whilst I have the laptop docked, I get woken in the middle of the night with my screen turning on, as a result of the laptop turning on. That'll be why.

So hopefully I'll have fewer interrupted sleeps.

Anyhows, this particular scheduled task is set to only start when the computer is plugged into power - which is the case when it's docked and I get the laptop turning on and the screen turning on and waking me in the middle of the night - but it doesn't explain why it wakes at around 2am on battery.

... or does it?

Someone else commenting on a similar problem said they noticed that the Windows 7 final release had a bug related specifically to the "Balanced" power profile. Somehow or other, the bug didn't seem to affect the "Performance" power profile. And I happen to use the "Balanced" power profile nearly all the time.

So here's my suspicion : the stupid Media Center scheduled task was causing the laptop to wake at 2am daily, and even though the settings said it should only happen when plugged into power, I suspect a bug somewhere in the Balanced power profile resulted in this scheduled task waking the computer even when it was on battery.

But of course "the proof is in the pudding". I definitely have solved at least one problem, but whether it will prove to have solved the main problem, we're yet to see...