LG gram 15.6 2024 - sleep issues with Win11 Pro

[rabidman]

I bought the above laptop 2 weeks ago from Costco, with Intel CPU, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD. It is fairly nice. This is the first portable PC I have ever owned in 37 years of using them, and 32 years of building them - desktops, obviously.

 

I'm having issues with the power management on this laptop.

 

1) on battery

 

Closing the lid when on battery should make the machine sleep. Even with the lid open, the balanced power plan is supposed to make it sleep at 3 mins of inactivity on battery. It just doesn't seem to go to sleep. My evidence for that is that after a very long (>24hr) journey during which it wasn't used and in my backpack, the battery was at less than 20% when I finally arrived at my destination and started using it.

 

Also, I couldn't easily connect my Sony headphones to my smartphone while in the airplane. The headphones were paired with both the PC and the smartphone. The headphones would always connect to the PC in the overhead bin first, which was presumably not fully asleep.

I kept turning the headphones on and off and manually trying to connect from my phone, and eventually won the race.

 

2) lid closed, plugged in

 

At home, I use the laptop with a USB-C docking station, and the lid closed. The balanced power plan is supposed to make it sleep at 5 mins of inactivity when plugged in. It does not. It remains constantly on 24/7, consuming power. It can be ping'ed, remote accessed into, used locally with the KVM, etc. Forcibly using the start menu and  shutdown->sleep has no effect whatsover.

 

These are serious enough problems that I'm considering returning the laptop to Costco, even though I paid for an upgrade from Win11 Home to Win11 Pro from Keysoff, and the key is now tied to this hardware.

 

Does any LG laptop user have an idea what to do here to let the thing sleep ?

 

[John Ratsey]

I have similar problems with a 2022 Gram 17 running Windows 11. After some initial fiddling with various settings I concluded that the underlying problem is with Modern Standby https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/power-efficient-settings-in-windows-11-0d6a2b6b-2e87-4611-9980-ac9ea2175734, https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-enable-s3-sleep-state-and-disable-modern/507c85fb-977d-4891-b5b1-d302c918ee0e. Effectively there's less sleep, more keeping aware of what's going on (checking emails, etc) and has become a security feature to turn off the screen and lock the computer while the user is away from their desk.

 

I'm also old enough to remember that Windows sleep could never be trusted with people publishing photos of melted parts of computers where they had been put in bags while sleeping. Consequently, I've always used hibernation. SSD speeds means that this is a much faster process than with mechanical hard discs.

[skipper]

Same here, 2023 version, always hibernation to be on the safe side. This is a Windows 11 issue, not a Gram specific issue, you will have similar problems with other Windows laptops. There was a vide on Linus Tech tips about it, it showed that if you put the laptop in sleep while plugged in and then unplugged, it never went to sleep, had to unplug and then put it to sleep. Also when Windows is freshly installed it will keep on indexing and syncing in the background. So the best solution is to activate hibernation. Use the LG Power Manager App to activate hibernation.

[rabidman]

On 11/21/2024 at 9:10 PM, skipper said:

Same here, 2023 version, always hibernation to be on the safe side. This is a Windows 11 issue, not a Gram specific issue, you will have similar problems with other Windows laptops. There was a vide on Linus Tech tips about it, it showed that if you put the laptop in sleep while plugged in and then unplugged, it never went to sleep, had to unplug and then put it to sleep. Also when Windows is freshly installed it will keep on indexing and syncing in the background. So the best solution is to activate hibernation. Use the LG Power Manager App to activate hibernation.

Thanks. This is crazy.

 

I recently upgraded 4 custom built desktops from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 11 Pro. Sleep mode works as well as it ever did, including Wake-On-LAN, which I use extensively.

 

It is mind blowing that laptops would not be able to go to sleep. That should be a stop ship bug, not just for this laptop, but any laptop.

 

I setup my laptop with a local account, not a Microsoft account. Microsoft really makes it hard, but I still succeeded eventually.

 

But I had to add my Microsoft account to access the store and download the LG Power Manager. Why doesn't this tool come with the laptop ?

 

Also, I can't make any sense of it. The option to hibernate still does not show up in the context menu when right-clicking the Windows logo and selecting "shut down or sign out". What am I missing ?

 

This is annoying enough to make me want to return the laptop to Costco. I have about a month and a half left to do so.

 

I'm also running into another problem with BitLocker. I enabled it on the boot drive, and set it up with a PIN, so that the data would be inaccessible if the laptop was lost or stolen. The system asks for PIN at reboots for updates, of course. When connected to my docking station and KVM switch, the BIOS screen does not show on the attached external monitor, and the attached keyboard also does not function. I am forced to type the PIN on the laptop keyboard itself.

Again, all this functionality works fine on my desktops attached to the KVM - I can see the BIOS screen and get into the BIOS menu.

 

 

 

 

[John Ratsey]

It's a mystery to my why hibernate isn't enabled by default on laptops but have you tried the steps here Shut down, sleep, or hibernate your PC - Microsoft Support ?

 

Also, unless you are needing the maximum hours on battery, enable the battery saver mode which limits the maximum charge to 80%.

[skipper]

" When connected to my docking station and KVM switch, the BIOS screen does not show on the attached external monitor, and the attached keyboard also does not function" . No laptop is doing this, they all revert to the laptop display at BIOS. Laptops are different beasts from desktops.

Sleep mode on a desktop has no issues because it stays always plugged, you see no battery drain.

The article that John linked shows how to activate the Hibernate mode, have to go to old Control panel power settings. He is right, the laptop should come already with the option enabled by default

[rabidman]

On 12/14/2024 at 7:13 AM, John Ratsey said:

It's a mystery to my why hibernate isn't enabled by default on laptops but have you tried the steps here Shut down, sleep, or hibernate your PC - Microsoft Support ?

 

Also, unless you are needing the maximum hours on battery, enable the battery saver mode which limits the maximum charge to 80%.

Thanks. I was able enable hibernation - not sure how anymore, but it was without the help of the LG power tool.

I don't really know how much of the battery I need - I haven't been able to ascertain that yet due to the high self-discharge rate from the laptop not sleeping.

 

 

[rabidman]

On 12/15/2024 at 12:08 AM, skipper said:

 No laptop is doing this, they all revert to the laptop display at BIOS. Laptops are different beasts from desktops.

Sleep mode on a desktop has no issues because it stays always plugged, you see no battery drain.

Thanks for your response. I have previously used - but not owned - work-issued professional grade laptops that had custom docking station connectors, including a power button. This allowed starting them up with the lid closed. As I recall, they behaved in a slightly more rational manner with regard to the external display, though I don't remember exactly. It's been a while.

 

Anyway, my goal is to be able to use the laptop as a desktop when at home, with the lid closed, attached to the Thunderbolt docking station and the KVM switch. I would like the laptop to properly sleep, not hibernate, so that it can resume quickly if needed, as my desktops do. I also want to be able to wake it up without taking a few steps to open the lid. WOL is just one way I was thinking of doing it, but simply enabling mouse or keyboard wakeup in device manager would do the trick as well.

 

None of these wakeup methods will work if the laptop is in hibernate mode rather than sleep, though.

 

Also, does anyone know why I might not be getting any email notifications for this topic ? I'm properly following it, but not receiving anything.

 

[skipper]

8 hours ago, rabidman said:

Thanks for your response. I have previously used - but not owned - work-issued professional grade laptops that had custom docking station connectors, including a power button. This allowed starting them up with the lid closed. As I recall, they behaved in a slightly more rational manner with regard to the external display, though I don't remember exactly. It's been a while.

 

Anyway, my goal is to be able to use the laptop as a desktop when at home, with the lid closed, attached to the Thunderbolt docking station and the KVM switch. I would like the laptop to properly sleep, not hibernate, so that it can resume quickly if needed, as my desktops do. I also want to be able to wake it up without taking a few steps to open the lid. WOL is just one way I was thinking of doing it, but simply enabling mouse or keyboard wakeup in device manager would do the trick as well.

 

None of these wakeup methods will work if the laptop is in hibernate mode rather than sleep, though.

 

Also, does anyone know why I might not be getting any email notifications for this topic ? I'm properly following it, but not receiving anything.

 

I strongly advise against using the Gram with the lid closed. I have mine also docked but always the lid open, it is on the side and does not disturb me visually. If you use the Gram for some time, you will feel how the surface of the keyboard emits heat. Not unpleasant, but the metallic keyboard surface helps to dissipate heat. If the lid is closed, this heat will be slowly cooking the very thin LCD of the Gram and the overall cooling will be suboptimal. Laptops have become too thin to properly dissipate heat from the back and underneath.

If you keep the laptop docked and plugged, you don't really care about battery decharge, it will always remain charged (better to limit it at 80% to protect the battery through the LG Smart Assistant). So you can just use normal sleep and awake the laptop with the keyboard or mouse.

If you undock the laptop, then you can put it in hibernation before you put the Gram in your laptop bag. I set the laptop to sleep when I close the lid and to hibernate when I press the power button.

[rabidman]

1 hour ago, skipper said:

I strongly advise against using the Gram with the lid closed. I have mine also docked but always the lid open, it is on the side and does not disturb me visually. If you use the Gram for some time, you will feel how the surface of the keyboard emits heat. Not unpleasant, but the metallic keyboard surface helps to dissipate heat. If the lid is closed, this heat will be slowly cooking the very thin LCD of the Gram and the overall cooling will be suboptimal. Laptops have become too thin to properly dissipate heat from the back and underneath.

If you keep the laptop docked and plugged, you don't really care about battery decharge, it will always remain charged (better to limit it at 80% to protect the battery through the LG Smart Assistant). So you can just use normal sleep and awake the laptop with the keyboard or mouse.

If you undock the laptop, then you can put it in hibernation before you put the Gram in your laptop bag. I set the laptop to sleep when I close the lid and to hibernate when I press the power button.

Thanks. Point taken about the heat. Wouldn't the laptop throttle down the CPU if it overheats while the lid is closed, though ?

 

I don't care about the battery while the laptop is docked, indeed.

 

I know I could put the laptop in hibernation mode while on the go. That still causes a slow restart. Every work laptop I ever used before this one properly went to sleep - not hibernate - when closing the lid. Is this truly impossible to achieve on this laptop ?

 

Even before I got hibernate working, I could also have shut down the laptop before boarding the airplane. It then wouldn't have stolen the Bluetooth headphones while buried deep in the overhead bin and not easily accessible, or drained the battery. However, it's very easy to forget to shut down your laptop, or put it in hibernate mode, while it's impossible to forget to close the lid when traveling, because it won't fit in the backpack otherwise.

 

[skipper]

Shutting down is not the same as hibernate, yes it is not instant like sleep, but with hibernate you get all your work back where you left it. With the fast SSDs it resumes pretty fast anyway. If I just move around from one room to another, or just from the waiting area to board the plane, I just close the lid and that's it. But I am careful, too many times battery got depleted with the lousy Windows Modern Standby, or the laptop got too hot in the backpack. But I don't know if it is feasible to get the old sleep for our Grams and found that just alternating between Standby and Hibernation will do the trick