Stay Awake

From Mintech Solutions:

How many times have you ran a virus scan or disk defrag or any other number of time consuming processes just to come back to your computer to find that it has gone into Sleep or Hibernate mode, which of course pauses or completely stops the scan that you had started? This has happened to most of us, and the majority will be forced to sit at the computer the whole time or continue to come back to the computer periodically to simply move the mouse or press a key on the keyboard just to keep the computer awake so the long task you are running can finish uninterrupted. If you are savvy enough, you can delve into the system setting & temporarily disable Sleep or Hibernate to allow you to carry out what it is you want to do. But then, you have to remember to go back afterward and turn everything back on.

Stay Awake is a simple, yet incredibly useful program designed for times just as these. Simply run the file & Stay Awake will do just as it's name says. It will keep your computer awake! Allowing you to carry out your long virus scans or disk defrags or anything else without having to worry about your computer falling asleep and stopping what you had started. There is no configuration or installation necessary, just open Stay Awake & it will immediately go to work silently in the background keeping your computer awake. For added convenience you can also minimize the Stay Awake GUI to the task bar so it won't be forever in your way sitting on your desktop. There is still one Windows drawback though.. If Windows installs updates & you are not at your computer to tell it to postpone a system restart, Windows will automatically restart your system on you, which of course will annoyingly cause a similar problem if you are trying to carry out scans or time consuming processes on your computer. For this reason, on top of preventing Screensaver, Sleep or Hibernate modes on your PC, Stay Awake will also temporarily disable the Windows Update Restart Service. By doing this, your computer will not automatically restart on you while you are away. Once you have shut down Stay Awake when it is convenient for you, the Windows Update Service will automatically restart itself and the computer will go back to being able to inter Screensaver, Sleep & Hibernate modes.

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