Monitor Sleep Time Troubleshooting

Question

Monitor Sleep Time Troubleshooting

Phillip Richcreek 1,125

I had set the Monitor Sleep Time to 15 minutes and it was working fine. Today I noticed that the monitor was staying on for a lot more than 15 minutes. I went into Settings and set the sleep time to 3 minutes. The monitor didn't go OFF, even after a lot more than 3 minutes.
Monitor settings troubleshoot

I don't know anything that I did differently from what I had done previously.

Thanks for your help,

PR

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Ivan B 125.3K Independent Advisor

Hi,

Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options and check the "Choose when to turn off the display" setting.

Check if the 3-minute setting is applied.

If that doesn't work, click "Change plan settings" for the Balanced plan, then "Change advanced power settings" > Display > "Turn off display after."

If that still doesn't work, perform a clean boot just to ensure that third-party software isn't interfering.

Then perform a clean boot:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-execute-a-simple-boot-start-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

Please consider rating the question (accepting the answer or not) and visiting the Microsoft Q&A community if you have further questions.

Thanks.

Phillip Richcreek 1,125 Reputation points

2026-10-15T07:59:34.3833333+00:00

I will tolerate the Monitor Sleep Time issue for now.

Thanks for your reply.
PR
Ivan B 125.3K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-10-15T08:54:11+00:00

Hi,

What if it’s a laptop?

Were you unable to perform a clean boot when trying to follow my procedure?

Thanks

Answer 2

Hendrix-V 20,225 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi Phillip Richcreek,

Because the monitor remains on even after you reduced the timeout to 3 minutes, the next step I suggest is checking whether something is actively requesting that the display stay awake.

Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run: powercfg /requests
If something appears under DISPLAY, temporarily close that application or disconnect the associated device, then test again.

If you'd like, please share the command output here and we can use it to narrow down the cause.

Phillip Richcreek 1,125 Reputation points

2026-10-15T07:54:07.2366667+00:00

When I run the command I get "Command requires administrator privileges". I am the administrator.
Hendrix-V 20,225 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-10-16T01:33:36.3666667+00:00
Hi Phillip Richcreek,

Thank you for the screenshot. Being signed in with an administrator account does not automatically run Command Prompt with elevated privileges.

Please try:

Open Start and type Command Prompt.

Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Select Yes at the User Account Control prompt.

Run: powercfg /requests

Once it runs, please share the output, particularly anything shown under DISPLAY, and we can narrow down what may be keeping the monitor awake.
Hendrix-V 20,225 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-10-17T08:16:30.7233333+00:00

Hi Phillip Richcreek,

If you have any further questions or updates regarding this issue, please feel free to let me know in the Comments section. I'd be happy to assist you.