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Windows pc calling home (even while asleep)

I have a network-wide pi hole and I noticed that it requested activity.windows.com, a url blocked by my pi hole, even while my pc is suspended. I pinged 10.0.0.217 and it is currently unreachable. So, somehow, windows pc’s turn on networking, phones home, and turns off even while suspended.

Creepy behavior

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  • Thanks pihole!

    (Also, hibernate > sleep imo )

    • Shutdown is hybrid sleep anyway. Best of both worlds.

      Also FYI you have to restart to properly shut down Windows now. If you shut down and then turn it back on it will just resume from S4 hybrid sleep. Shut down does not normally shut down, it enters a zero power sleep state. Restart actually shuts down and reboots the OS.

      I think hybernation is really meant for when you want near zero power but a little trickle for something specific to wake the PC, eg an external device or network port. You can also sometimes do this directly in BIOS, if it has the facility.

      • You're a bit confused.

        • Sleep keeps the system on but in a low power state. User and kernel sessions are kept in RAM. If power is lost, you start from a clean session. The system can resume full power with a key press or mouse movement.
        • Hibernate dumps the user and kernel session from RAM to disk and completely powers off. Upon startup, the hiberfil.sys file is read and put back into RAM. The physical power button must be pressed to turn on.
        • Hybrid Shutdown uses a feature called Fast Startup. The user session is discarded, while the kernel session is written to disk before the system completely powers off. Upon startup, the hiberfil.sys file is read and puts the kernel session back into RAM. The last logged on user has their profile preloaded, including any apps that support the feature. The physical power button must be pressed to turn on.

        You can disable Fast Startup or simply hold SHIFT and click Shutdown. The feature requires the user to press the Shutdown button within Windows for it to function. If you press the physical power button on your case, that is an ACPI initiated shutdown and bypasses the Fast Startup feature. This is by design.

        Your motherboard firmware controls whether or not the USB ports will continue to supply power when the system is off. It's essentially like a wall brick at this point.

        Fast Startup was really meant for HDD. With SSD it's not really necessary. It's negligible time savings and with how buggy drivers can be, days or weeks old kernel sessions are bound to start causing problems.

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