microsoft
[PowerToys Awake] Not restarting after explorer crash
Microsoft PowerToys version
0.84.0
Installation method
PowerToys auto-update
Running as admin
No
Area(s) with issue?
Awake
Steps to reproduce
After explorer crashed, the icon does not reappear in the taskbar and the awake functionality is not turned on, while it's set to on in the PowerToys settings.
✔️ Expected Behavior
Should reopen Awake and keep computer awake.
❌ Actual Behavior
not reopening and not keeping computer awake.
Other Software
None
We've found some similar issues:
- #21351 , similarity score: 82%
- #34275 , similarity score: 81%
If any of the above are duplicates, please consider closing this issue out and adding additional context in the original issue.
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#21351 is closed, but the problem remains. #34275 is similar, however I have problems after explorer crashed and restarted, not after waking up from sleep. Also the taskbar icon in my case disappeared.
@seanmamasde can you tell me more about how explorer crashed? Was it on boot, during some other app operation, or while you were changing specific PowerToys settings?
No explorer crashing isn't because of PowerToys, it's me doing some other things and find it become unresponsive so I force it to quit using taskmgr and restarted using run explorer.exe. That said the Awake should still re-hook(?) onto the explorer process? I don't know how it worked under the hood, I just observed that it's no longer effective or even turned on after explorer restart. Hope this helps.
Do you see Awake in Task Manager, and if so, if you run powercfg /requests after, do you see PowerToys.Awake.exe in the list (you can share the output here)?
Yes it appears in the task manager, and it also shows up in the command output:
powercfg /requests
DISPLAY:
[PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files\PowerToys\PowerToys.Awake.exe
SYSTEM:
[PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files\PowerToys\PowerToys.Awake.exe
AWAYMODE:
None.
EXECUTION:
None.
PERFBOOST:
None.
ACTIVELOCKSCREEN:
None.
Recently I also found out that when my explorer.exe crashed and restarted itself or I simply restarted it manually, the awake doesn't appear in the system tray automatically, but when I go into the Powertoys settings and toggle the awake thing a few times (it wouldn't reappear on the first try, usually takes 3 toggles), it would start to show up where it should be.
So it sounds like Awake disappears from the tray during explorer.exe crashes but does still run in the background. I wonder if this could be addressed by the fixes I am adding for #35250, but maybe I need to test this more with an explorer.exe restart.
I can reliably reproduce this - the tray icon disappears after restarting explorer.exe. Investigating the root cause.