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Is Windows 7 sleep mode supposed to turn off the NIC card?

Here is my problem: I have a Dell Optiplex 745 with Windows 7 Pro installed on it. When the computer goes to sleep, the NIC card also turns off. I know this because when coming out of sleep, I see the network icon on the bottom right hand corner with a red X on it. After maybe 15 seconds, the connection is restored and I can see my network and network drives again.
My question is, is sleep mode supposed to turn off the NIC card? I did not find anything that says it isn't supposed to turn off the NIC card.

I have updated to the latest BIOS version from Dell. I have the latest NIC card driver (Broadcom 57XX gigabit) from Broadcom. I unchecked the box that says "allow for comptuer to turn off this device to save power". I even tried the registry hack found in this thread (https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/25010351/Turn-off-Windows-7-NIC-Sleep-mode.html) and it did not work. There arent many options in BIOS but I did change the sleep power setting to S1 (saves least amount of power).

I am out of ideas to try. Or is sleep working correctly and I am just wasting my time?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

TommySzalapski

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Mez4343

Could be that you have Hybrid Sleep=on. Hybrid Sleep will put your computer in Hibernate mode based on Hibernate After setting.

Go to Power Options in Control panel and click Change Advanced Power Settings. There is a 'Allow Hybrid sleep' option under Sleep node. Turn it off.

Sounds to me like you dont want Sleep mode on at all anyway. Why not just use a screensaver or turn off monitor and call it a day?

Jeff Brown

Sleep does shut off the network card. always has you can still use wake on lan functionality but windows is suspended so all network links are discontinued while in sleep mode and must be woken up.

--Wild

qnzaaron

ASKER

Thanks for the comments so far. I did leave out some details. I do want to be able to sleep for the power savings. However, I do want the NIC card to stay on to not lose the connection to the network.

Mez, Hybrid sleep is set to disabled.

Tommy, are there any notes from Microsoft that says sleep disables the NIC card? Are you saying if I turn sleep off, but leave Turn hard disk off and turn monitor off, the comptuer would still go into a "sleep" mode? That may work for me

TommySzalapski

Right. It's like a step between the full out sleep mode and not sleeping at all. A lot of power is still saved but some things still run.

Jeff Brown

why do you need the network card active if all processes on the computer are completely stopped?
even if sleep let the network card stay on any process that would use the network card would be suspended and have to be restored.

Tommy's suggestion to just turn the monitor off is more like what you are asking for but this is not sleep mode the computer is still fully active the monitor is just turned off.