Skip to content

Group Policy for Power Management Sleep Settings May Stop Defer Processing from Running

Release Date: 12/6/2019
Version: All

We recently had a support incident where an Elliott user tried to implement deferred processing by running EL850DP.EXE on the server. When the user logged into the server console and started the deferred processing, it appeared to be working.  Except a few hours later, the deferred processing stopped, and the EL850DP.EXE was no longer in the memory -- as if the task was terminated.

Since the Elliott defer processing program will not exit on its own, and if it is misbehaving the Operation System will terminate it with the proper error in the event log -- and there's none in this case -- we initially thought that this is related to anti-virus software.

The user stopped the anti-virus software, and later on uninstalled the anti-virus software from the server, but that did not fix the problem.  It was later on discovered by the user that the issue is related to the power management and sleep settings of the server.  After performing group policy changes, the problem was resolved. What follows are the details:

(1) Platform is being upgraded but currently is Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard SP1 and  64 bit OS.

(2) Changed the power options to NEVER turn off the monitor and to NEVER put the hard disk to sleep. This didn’t work either.

(3) Went to the “Local Group Policy Editor” and made the changes there; then it took. The changes made were as follows:

a. Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Power Management > Sleep Settings. There, modify the setting “Specify the Unattended Sleep Timeout (Plug In)” 
  1. Set to “Enable
  2. In Options and under “Unattended Sleep Timeout (seconds): Set it to “0” [Zero]
b. Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Session Time Limits. There, modify the setting “Set Time Limit for Disconnected Sessions”
  1. Set to “Enable
  2. In Options and under “End a Disconnected Session” Set it to “Never
Below is a sample screen of Local Group Policy Editor:


EMK

Feedback and Knowledge Base