What does "USB selective suspend" mean?

Anonymous
2010-10-14T06:39:16+00:00

In Windows 7, Power Options->USB Settings->USB selective suspend setting, what does "USB selective suspend" mean?  Also, given that there is only one setting, why does it say "USB Settings" instead of "USB Setting"?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2011-02-17T03:53:10+00:00

A USB device driver can send a message to windows telling it to idle the device.  This puts the device in a low-power state (the suspend state).  When a USB device is suspended, windows does not wait for it to respond before entering a sleep or hibernate mode.  If you disable this feature, the system will simply return a failure to the driver when the driver attempts to enter suspend state.  If the driver complies with Microsoft guidelines, it will simply retry the idle request at every expiration of its idle timer.

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-06-28T14:22:49+00:00

    LAPABC, I don't see a previous answer so I will jump in and post what I found while looking into the question you asked.

    "So here's the question, do you think that going to Power Options->USB Settings->USB selective suspend and then DISABLING it would have the same effect as what was described above?"

    Apparently the answer is yes.  I found that when I disabled suspend in the power settings all of the individual settings on the devices were also disabled.  I don't know if this will have the effect I want, which is to stop my USB devices from being disabled without warning but I am giving it a try.

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-07-03T15:35:02+00:00

    Disabling the USB selective suspend has worked for me thus far.  I manage a computer lab and 5% to 7% of the systems have had power-up issues.  Thx.

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-07-18T08:55:48+00:00

    dude, where do you think Google Searches take you?... places like this!; don't waste the space telling people to Google it. You think someone would come here before typing it in Google?!

    Agreed - I also found this page from Google. (In fact it is the first result for searching "USB Selective Suspend"!)

    This feature is enabled/disabled via Power Plans. If I understand this correctly, then setting this to "Enabled" uses less power, correct? Is it a considerable amount of battery-power or is it pretty negligible? (I assume that it depends on which devices (and number of devices) one has connected via USB, but on average, in most situations does this make much of a difference?)

    (The reason for my confusion is that on my netbook (running Windows 8) both the "High performance" and the "Power saver" plans have this defaulted to "Enabled.")

    Thanks much for your help, "help forums are your friends."  ;)

    MikeY

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