Stopping Windows 7 from sleeping while certain processes are running?

[Carr0t]

OK, so I know that in Windows some processes can prevent the system from entering sleep or shutting off the monitor. My system is configured to shut off the monitor after 5 minutes of inactivity and sleep the machine after 30, but when i'm watching a video in VLC, fullscreen or otherwise, neither occurs even if I don't touch the mouse or keyboard for 45 mins.

A friend told me about powercfg /requests (run it in an Admin cmd prompt), which supposedly shows all requests that are currently affecting the display or machine sleep functionality, broken into 3 components - DISPLAY, SYSTEM and AWAYMODE. When watching a video in VLC (over the network, but I don't think that matters) I see the file i'm watching under SYSTEM, and I also see that my audio driver is in use under there. Under DISPLAY I see the VLC process. The system still sleeps if i'm playing MP3s over the network in iTunes, so I assume it's the DISPLAY element that's the important one in this case. I know that if i'm running certain games (World of Warcraft being the example I remember) the machine won't sleep either, but with some others it will (even if they're fullscreen with focus the entire time).

Thing is, i'm in the middle of encoding all my DVDs to mkv and putting them on the file server, so I can watch them over the network from any PC in the house (and on the TV using XBMC). I'm using Handbrake for this, and it *doesn't* stop my computer from sleeping. So if i'm running a stack of encodes overnight I have to remember to go to Control Panel->Power Options and tell the machine not to sleep, then tell Handbrake to Suspend once the encode is done. Then if I forget to change these settings *back* when i'm encoding in the background while doing something else the machine suddenly suspends on me.

I was hoping I could find a little app that I could run or a configuration option to powercfg that would allow me to say "While this program is running do not sleep the computer", but I can't find anything. Has anyone else out there found anything that will do that?

Ta

[GoNz0]

http://www.ghacks.net/2010/11/21/don...wn-in-windows/ ?

[Carr0t]

That's cool, but is basically just a slightly quicker way of doing what I already am. I'd still have to remember to start the app or alter whether I wanted it to stop sleep or not each time.

What I was hoping for is something I could configure individual programs in, so that once i've got it configured for the programs that I want to prevent sleep I can just run it in the background and not have to remember to change any settings each time. It'd just be a case of when I load Handbrake the app prevents sleep until Handbrake is closed.

Ta for the link though I'd found a couple of small programs that did similar things.

[GoNz0]

you could always write a very simple batch file to launch both, not really hard to go "oh now i closed handbrake theres the no sleep app hiding under it"

[csaurel]

POWERCFG -REQUESTSOVERRIDE PROCESS `name_of_the_process` Display System