Standby

Alternatively referred to as sleep mode, Standby a power-saving mode available on most computers, monitors, and other electronic hardware. When the device is idle for a set time, it may temporarily disable hardware features that consume power, such as its display, network hardware, or internal storage. If the user interacts with the device, normal operation is restored.

Standby mode helps conserve power when a computer or electronic device is not in use, without fully powering if off. Standby mode is usually indicated by a solid or flashing amber light on the body of the device. When the user interacts with the device and brings it out of Standby mode, the indicator light turns green.

How to put a computer in Standby in Windows

To use Standby mode in Microsoft Windows, follow these steps.

Put the computer to sleep manually

1. Click Start or press the Windows key .
2. When the apps list appears, click in the bottom-left corner of the menu.
3. After you click the power button, select the sleep option.

Put the computer to sleep passively

To put a computer into Standby mode passively, you need to let it sit idle until the designated timer for sleep mode is up. You may change the amount of time before the computer sleeps in the power management settings.

For a laptop, there may be a Sleep button at the top of the keyboard. Also, with default settings, closing the laptop lid initiates Standby mode.

How to put a computer in Standby in macOS

To use Standby mode in macOS, follow these steps.

Put the computer to sleep manually

1. In the menu bar, click the Apple icon to open the Apple menu.
2. In the Apple menu, click Sleep.

You can also press Command+Eject, then select Sleep.

Put the computer to sleep passively

To put a computer into Standby mode passively, you need to let it sit idle until the designated timer for sleep mode is up. You may change the amount of time before the computer sleeps in the power management settings.

How to wake or get out of Standby mode

To resume, wake, or wake up a computer in Standby mode you can move the mouse, press a key on the keyboard, or press the power button once.

If a computer doesn’t come out of Standby mode using one of the methods mentioned above, you may reboot the computer by holding down the power button for 5-10 seconds.

What is the crescent moon symbol?

The crescent moon symbol is used to represent nighttime or, in other words, going to sleep. This symbol may be on a button on your computer case or as a computer keyboard key.

Should I use «standby» or «stand by» in my writing?

When using the word as an adjective, adverb, or noun in your writing, use «standby» as one word. If you’re describing the Standby mode in a computer, it should always begin with a capital «S.» If you’re using the word as a verb, use «stand by.»

As an example, the sentence, «If you stand by your computer, you can adjust its Standby or Power & Sleep settings», uses both forms.

What is Modern Standby

Windows 10 Modern Standby (Modern Standby) expands the Windows 8.1 Connected Standby power model. Connected Standby, and consequently Modern Standby, enable an instant on / instant off user experience, similar to smartphone power models. Just like the phone, the S0 low power idle model enables the system to stay connected to the network while in a low power mode.

Although Modern Standby enables an instant on/off user experience like Connected Standby, Modern Standby is more inclusive than the Windows 8.1 Connected Standby power model. Modern Standby allows for market segments previously limited to the Traditional Sleep (S3) power model to take advantage of the low power idle model. Example systems include systems based on rotational media and hybrid media (for example, SSD + HDD or SSHD) and/or a NIC that doesn’t support all of the prior requirements for Connected Standby.

The number of systems supporting Modern Standby rather than S3 is increasing over time. The Modern Standby section outlines important changes, partner requirements, and best practices for enabling Modern Standby.

Modern Standby is available for both WindowsВ 10 desktop and WindowsВ 10X.

Switching between S3 and Modern Standby cannot be done by changing a setting in the BIOS. Switching the power model is not supported in Windows without a complete OS re-install.

Functional Overview of Modern Standby

A Modern Standby session encompasses the entire screen-off to screen-on user scenario. However, individual screen off and sleep segments make up an overall Modern Standby session. These states differentiate periods of quiescing software behavior from periods of long term low power. For this reason, Microsoft conceputalizes modern sleep as equivalent to traditional S3 sleep, with the added benefit of allowing value-added software activities to run periodically.

In Windows 10, low power is achieved by only waking from the lowest power state when absolutely necessary and only allowing software to execute in short, controlled bursts of activity, dramatically reducing the opportunities for software components to execute. Windows and the SoC hardware are always listening for interesting events (such as a network packet or user input at a keyboard) and will wake up instantly when needed. The system will wake when there is real time action required, such as for OS maintenance or when a user wakes the system.

Modern Standby consists of multiple hardware and software power modes, all of which occur with the screen turned off. The complexity of Modern Standby is a result of keeping the system alive to process background tasks, while ensuring that the system stays quiet enough to achieve long battery life.

Entry to Modern Standby

Modern Standby starts when the user causes the system to enter sleep (e.g user pressing the power button, closing the lid, idling out, or selecting Sleep from the power button in the Windows Start menu). On entry to Modern Standby, apps and system software must be made ready for the transition to low-power operation. (See Prepare software for Modern Standby.) After software components and apps have been prepared for low-power operation, hardware components, including their software device drivers, must be similarly prepared for low-power operation. (See Prepare hardware for Modern Standby.) Both software and hardware must be made ready for low-power operation.

Activity during Modern Standby

On-demand transitions to active mode can occur in response to user inputs, interrupts from networking devices and other hardware events. Windows transitions the SoC from active mode to idle mode after all software activity is stopped and the devices on and off the SoC have entered low-power states. (See Transitioning between active and idle states.)

The networking and communications devices automatically transition between active and low-power modes based on the software activity of the system during Modern Standby. When there are no system services or Microsoft Store app background tasks that require the network, the networking device is in the low-power, protocol offload, and WoL patterns mode. When a system service or background task requires network access, Windows automatically transitions the networking device to an active mode.

On occasion, the system stays in the active mode (with the screen off) for a longer interval of time. These longer active intervals occur for a variety of reasons, for example, processing incoming email or downloading critical Windows updates. Windows components that are allowed to leave the SoC in the active power state are called activators because they are registered with the power manager as capable of blocking the transition back to the idle power mode. The durations of these activities vary widely but are controlled to extend battery life. The durations of the activities can be viewed with the built-in SleepStudy software tool or through Event Tracing for Windows (ETW)-based instrumentation.

On Windows 8.1 Connected Standby systems, during Modern Standby, Windows transitions the SoC from idle mode to active mode a minimum of every 30 seconds to perform kernel maintenance tasks. This maintenance activity is extremely brief in duration (typically no more than a few hundred milliseconds) and cannot be adjusted. This does not happen on Windows 10 Modern Standby systems.

Modern Standby States

From a user’s perspective, a modern standby “session” is conceptualized as the time between two system events: screen off to screen on. However, within this overall session, several layers of system activities will run as the system is quiesced to enter its lowest power state. Because of this, Microsoft conceptualizes the screen off to screen on modern standby session as two separate states: Screen Off and Sleep. This article aims to explain the distinction of these states. Please see Modern Standby firmware notifications to learn about the transition notifications available to system designers.

Modern Standby system states

There is a clear distinction between software activity that can run as the system is being quiesced and software activity that can run while the system is in its true sleep phase. Thus, the expected behaviors and performance standards differ between the Screen Off state and the Sleep state.

After the screen turns off, a waterfall flow of phases quiets the system to its Sleep state. Please see this page on preparing the software for modern standby for more detailed information on this process. When the system reaches the “low power phase”, all ancillary, larger workloads have completed and it is able to enter into a Sleep state. During the Sleep state, specific value-adding SW activity may run— e.g., the system receives an email notification, refreshes a network connection, etc.—while maintaining a very low power floor. Thus, like a smartphone, a modern standby system aims to consume very low energy while still providing the user real-time connectivity and speedy wake times. While in Sleep, the system primarily remains in DRIPS—where no software activity runs whatsoever— yet it may wake briefly to perform value-adding SW activities.

A generic illustration of the typical power model (top) versus the smartphone-like Modern Standby power model (bottom). In the traditional S3 model, the system performs a few main tasks as it is quiesced to S3 sleep, in which no software activity runs at all. In the Modern Standby power model, the system is gradually quiesced to sleep, where small bursts of well-managed, value-adding software activity will run.

Beginning in Windows 10 version 2004, the differentiation between Screen Off and Sleep is also reflected in the SleepStudy report (‘powercfg spr’) as shown below. The top-level heading will indicate whether the system is Modern Standby-enabled or following the Traditional Sleep (S3) power model. On Modern Standby-capable systems, the session summary breakout will separate by Screen Off and Sleep.

For more information on how to interpret sleep study reports, please see the Sleepstudy report page.

What is windows standby

Might also try over here.

Regards, Dave Patrick .
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows Server] Datacenter Management

Disclaimer: This posting is provided «AS IS» with no warranties or guarantees, and confers no rights.

Standby memory are Pages of physical ram not actively being used. These are still left in physical ram but will be repurposed first by the memory manager (either returned to the active list or zeroed out and reused) if something needs physical ram for active pages.

Please reference the article below for further understanding:

Where has all my Physical RAM gone?

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

The Standby list, which is shown in blue, contains pages that have been removed from process working sets but are still linked to their respective working sets. As such, Standby list is essentially a cache. However, memory pages in the Standby list are prioritized in a range of 0-7, with 7 being the highest. Essentially, a page related to a high-priority process will receive a high-priority level in the Standby list.

For example, processes that are Shareable will be a high priority and pages associated with these Shareable processes will have the highest priority in the Standby list.

Now, if a process needs a page that is associated with the process and that page is now in the Standby list, the memory manager immediately returns the page to that process’ working set. However, all pages on the Standby list are available for memory allocation requests from any process. When a process requests additional memory and there is not enough memory in the Free list, the memory manager checks the page’s priority and will take a page with a low priority from the Standby list, initialize it, and allocate it to that process.

And you could use RAMMap to free up some memory,here is the download link:

Best Regards,
Cartman
Please remember to mark the replies as an answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

Standby memory are Pages of physical ram not actively being used. These are still left in physical ram but will be repurposed first by the memory manager (either returned to the active list or zeroed out and reused) if something needs physical ram for active pages.

Please reference the article below for further understanding:

Where has all my Physical RAM gone?

Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help.
If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

The Standby list, which is shown in blue, contains pages that have been removed from process working sets but are still linked to their respective working sets. As such, Standby list is essentially a cache. However, memory pages in the Standby list are prioritized in a range of 0-7, with 7 being the highest. Essentially, a page related to a high-priority process will receive a high-priority level in the Standby list.

For example, processes that are Shareable will be a high priority and pages associated with these Shareable processes will have the highest priority in the Standby list.

Now, if a process needs a page that is associated with the process and that page is now in the Standby list, the memory manager immediately returns the page to that process’ working set. However, all pages on the Standby list are available for memory allocation requests from any process. When a process requests additional memory and there is not enough memory in the Free list, the memory manager checks the page’s priority and will take a page with a low priority from the Standby list, initialize it, and allocate it to that process.

And you could use RAMMap to free up some memory,here is the download link: