Four things that all look like “the computer is off” — but only two of them lock your office out of the books. Here’s how to tell them apart, and how to set the one that matters.
Moving pictures or photos on the screen. Behind the show, the computer is fully awake and working. Wiggle the mouse and you’re instantly back. Books: reachable.
The display goes black to save power, but the computer itself is awake. Move the mouse; the picture returns instantly. Books: reachable. This one is fine in any amount.
Now the whole machine powers down to a sip of electricity. Work is held in memory, fans stop, and network connections close. Waking means pressing a key or the power button and waiting a few seconds for it to stir. While it sleeps, the books are unreachable — every other person gets “can’t connect,” and it looks exactly like a crash.
Everything is written to disk and the machine turns fully off. Waking takes longer, like a cold start that remembers where it was. Same effect as sleep for the office: books unreachable until it’s awake. Some laptops do this automatically after sleeping a long while, or when the battery gets low.
How to tell which one you’re looking at: move the mouse. Picture returns instantly → it was the saver or the screen. Nothing happens until you press the power button, then fans and a little wait → it was asleep or hibernating.
The computer that holds the books may run a screen saver and may turn its screen off — but while it’s plugged in and the office is working, it must not sleep. A sleeping host locks everyone out, and it’s the #1 cause of “the books are down” on an otherwise healthy system. Every other computer can sleep all it wants; only the host has a job.
Windows 11:
Windows 10: Start → Settings → System → Power & sleep → under Sleep, set “When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after” to Never.
[SCREENSHOT SPOT: Power & battery → sleep timeouts, with the Plugged-in sleep choice circled]
Laptop warning: closing a laptop’s lid usually puts it to sleep immediately, whatever the settings above say. A laptop can be a fine books computer — just leave the lid open while it’s hosting, or ask us and we’ll point you at the lid setting too.
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