[jasonjayr]

In the last few years; Microsoft started pushing this "Modern standby"[1] thing, which lets the CPU run while suspended or something. IIRC it is so a PC can run background services, wifi and what not, like tablets + cell phones.

It is causing so many issues, because the common use case for a laptop is to close the lid, and then stuff it into a padded bag. If anything starts up the laptop for whatever reason, all that heat is trapped in there, cooking the device. Some system BIOS are removing the option to even disable modern standby mode (vs traditional standby where just the memory was energized)

1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

[mrguyorama]

The rumor is that this is a bug that happens when you close your laptop screen to put it to sleep BEFORE you pull out the power plug, so the laptop basically never realizes it stopped being plugged into the wall, and does work it shouldn't, like a windows update. I always remove the power before putting a laptop to sleep and do not have this problem anymore.

It happens on macbooks too weirdly.

A sleeping laptop, even "modern sleep" should not be doing enough work to create a meaningful amount of heat.

[criddell]

This should work much better than it does. Microsoft is right - Windows machines should be able to run background services as well as a tablet or phone.

Their Modern Standby requirements should have included a clause saying that the machines efficiency core (which I assume is what would be running in standby) should not be able to raise the temperature enough to require a fan.

[haspok]

No, Microsoft did not ask the users if they wanted this or not (or made this behaviour configurable). Just as they did not ask users if they wanted to see ads in their Start menu...

[criddell]

You only want an option because Microsoft and their hardware partners did a poor job with this.

Pretty much nobody asks for the same feature to be configurable on their iPad because it works well.

[jasonjayr]

It works well on mobile devices because from the get-go, it is established that the operating system can aggressively suspend or halt processes. Laptops + PC's, on the other hand, have 40+ years of legacy that assume that the OS won't kill a process unless the user insists, or a resource disaster is imminent. They can deal with a pause, provided the processes external view of the state of the CPU + memory are not drastically changed.

Windows finally had suspend working reliably, where memory was frozen, and nothing else on the PC could change the state of memory or the CPU. Modern standby is Intel/Microsoft's effort to hoist that mobile-style of operating system management onto PC's, in an environment that was not expecting it.

They should have slowly rolled it out, with thermal protections from the get go to prevent disaster, and after a generation or two when the hardware + software are working correctly, made it on by default. It seems like they rushed it for Win 10, and then made it the default on Win 11 before it was really stable.

[mananaysiempre]

> Some system BIOS are removing the option to even disable modern standby mode

The CPU manufacturers have stopped providing support for developing firmware with an S3 (“traditional standby”) function for recent CPU generations, except for a couple of laptop manufacturers receiving special treatment.

[gosub100]

I really hope this doesn't become a contributing factor in a future plane crash from an onboard fire in the baggage compartment. I could see someone throwing their laptop in a suitcase with a bunch of clothes and having that heat building up into a thermal runaway. It's asinine to me that there isn't a hardware thermal sensor that just shuts off power if the heat is too high. In addition to the tragedy of an accident, what will happen is they'll probably block everyone from bringing laptops with them.

[cbm-vic-20]

Oh, you haven't touched your laptop in 30 minutes and we just reached 35,000 feet? This must be a good time to run "Antimalware Service Executable"!

[Dalewyn]

>I could see someone throwing their laptop in a suitcase with a bunch of clothes and having that heat building up into a thermal runaway.

There's this thing called Shut Down. Use it sometimes.

[gosub100]

Why just sometimes?

[Dalewyn]

Gotta learn to crawl before you can walk.