A recent problem I observed on several Windows 7 computers was that the display turns off after just 15 minutes, even though I set the Turn off display option to Never. Strange!
You are probably reading this because you tried to change your power plan settings to Never for everything, but your monitor turned off anyway! This can be very frustrating and usually happens on new installations of Windows 7, although I’ve seen it on older installations as well.
In this article, I will introduce various ways to solve this problem. Please note, if your computer is on, but the screen displays “No Signal†or “No Inputâ€, you should read my post on fixing blank or black screens Now let’s look at possible solutions.
Power Options – Control Panel
First, we need to make sure everything is configured correctly in Power Options. Click on “Start” and enter power options, or go to Control Panel (as icons) and then open Power Options from there.
Click Start, then Control Panel, then Hardware and Sound, and then click Power Options.
Click the Change Plan Settings link next to the currently selected plan. In my case, the High Performance plan is selected, so I click on the link next to it.
First, make sure the Put this computer to sleep setting is set to Never. Then change the Disable Display setting to any desired value. You don’t need to set it to Never if you don’t want to. After that, click the “Change advanced power settings” link.
Expand Hard Drive, and then expand Unmount Hard Drive After. Decrease the value to Never. Click OK and then Save Changes on the Change Plan Settings page.
Screen Saver – Control Panel
The second parameter you want to check is the splash screen. Go to Control Panel, click “Personalize” and then click “Screensaver” in the lower right corner.
Make sure the option is set to No. Sometimes, if the screensaver is set to Blank and the time-out is 15 minutes, it may look like your screen has turned off.
BIOS, graphics card, monitor
The above two methods are the most common reason for the display to turn off after a certain amount of time, but there may be other possible reasons.
BIOS – On some computers, the BIOS may have power saving settings that determine the sleep mode. These are the so-called sleep modes (S1, S2, S3, S4 and S5). On some computers, you will see the Deep Sleep Control option. You may need to disable this to make your computer wake up faster.
Video card. If you have a high-performance graphics card, make sure you have the latest drivers and management software. If you go through the settings, you can find an option that puts your graphics card into a low power mode or something similar.
Monitor. Finally, some monitors themselves have power saving features. It is usually assumed that the monitor goes into power saving mode if it does not detect any inputs (HDMI, VGA, DVI, etc.), but sometimes this happens unexpectedly.
You will need to press buttons on the monitor to access the monitor settings. These are pretty much all the reasons I could think of your display turning off when it shouldn’t. If you have any other questions or solutions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
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