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
    2017-10-18T00:36:02+00:00

    There is not just one setting.  There are two:  1.  enabled 2. disabled

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-02-04T21:16:02+00:00

    BlackDogLake - Quoting a partial from your 05/08/16 post: "...To paraphrase the parent/child description of the process

    https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/usbcoreblog/2011/05/10/demystifying-usb-selective-suspend/ it seemed to me that the "children" - such as a USB mouse

    • all had to go to sleep before the mother (the computer? -- obviously there are other levels in between) could go to sleep. Overly simplistic or maybe just wrong, but that's how I understood it. Which makes me think that disabling it for a usb port would keep Mom awake. No?"

    I can't agree or not, but it made a ton of sense to me. Your simplicity is what I like when trying to understand something new. When teaching a person something new, I tell them to make their notes so a 5th grader can understand as we all have different ways of grasping things. You did that for me. Thanks.

    My computer was already set to Enable for both so I think I'll leave well enough alone and re-read the link you provided without skimming this time, but I felt the article was saying the same as you - keep enabled. Thank you!

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-12-04T00:50:50+00:00

    Usb root hubs more often than not support multiple devices , as such  if you disable a root hubs ability to be turned off by the system you would think that this  parameter would propagate to all devices on said hub , however this is not necessarily so as the steps recorder sequence shows that even though a root hub is set to allow turn off by system if a device such as a mouse is connected even though devices on same hub can be turned off by system the mouse can be individually configured to wakeup the pc. Showing that the hub setting is not absolutely propagated to all devices on the hub .

    See the following steps recording for clarification .

    https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtqDyVdWlhOihYYwSsmPYiLXfW6V3A

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