Forums mIRC Help mIRC prevents monitor from sleeping

The last week, I've had issues with desktop PC monitor not entering sleep mode after the 10 minutes it's supposed to (Windows 10 version 22H2 and mIRC version 7.76).

Eventually, I found out that it only happens when mIRC is running.

Found out that when mIRC is running, powercfg reports that "An Audio Stream Is Currently in Use".

Tested with both the Realtek ALC1150 onboard sound and my old Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD (onboard disabled in BIOS when using the SB).

Disabling the audio devices prior to starting mIRC, and then enabling them when mIRC is running seems to work. Powercfg does not report any audio stream in use so far.

In mIRC options, all settings for sound is disabled.

I've had mIRC running for years and never had the monitor not going to sleep before, so no idea what happened this week.

Copied my mIRC install (both program files and appdata folders) over to a laptop running Windows 11, and it doesn't happen there.

Anyone else had this issue, or any tips to what to do?

Thanks!

I use Windows 10 with 7.76 beta, but I was using 7.76 stable before the beta. I have two monitors set to go to sleep after 10m and i never noticed it failing.

There are quite a few reports of this issue with the Realtek audio driver. You could try uninstalling/reinstalling the driver, or resetting its power plan options to defaults, as some have suggested in the links I found through Google.

Thank you for the suggestions.

I've tried to uninstall/reinstall the audo driver, and reset power plan to default. Same thing happens. Even tried disabling the Realtek audio device in BIOS.

When the Realtek audio device is disabled, the Nvidia High Definition Audio device (audio output from Nvidia graphics card to the monitor) shows as the device that reports "An Audio Stream Is Currently in Use".

I read that "High Definition Audio Device" is the Microsoft generic audio driver. Since both Realtek, Creative and Nvidia uses the same one, that might be the issue.

I tried installing my Sound Blaster card with Creative's newest WDM driver (Creative X-Fi Audio Processor), but the card is EOL, so the driver is no longer working.

Will buy a new sound card and test with something else than the generic driver from Microsoft, hopefully that fixes it 😊