Render Pauses on Windows 10 Lock Screen

[Anonymous]

I set up a 300-frame render before leaving the office last night.  Average frame time 18 seconds.

My machine is set to display lock screen after 5 minutes away (company policy). 

When I unlocked my machine this morning, the render had barely completed a quarter of the sequence, saying the last frame time was 15 hours.   

The next frame was 18 seconds again.  

Is there a way to ensure this doesn't happen again, with Max continuing to render even if Windows is locked?  

Thanks.

3DS Max 2018.2

Arnold Renderer

Windows 10 Pro v.1703

[jon.bell · Accepted solution]

Hi Brittnell,

Thanks for your question. I think what's happening here is that Windows 10 is suspending CPU processes while it's in sleep/lock mode.

You should be able to go into your Windows Control Panel > Power Options > Edit Plan Settings, and change your Computer's Sleep mode to "Never." (You could also click on the Change advanced power settings and customize your PC's power settings if necessary.)

Unless I'm mistaken, your PC will still go into "lock" mode after 5 minutes, but not officially go to sleep behind the lock screen, so any CPU-intensive processes like rendering will continue.

Please let us know if this helps!

Best regards,

Jon A. Bell

Autodesk Technical Support

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jon.

It's a brand new machine, and I didn't do the actual set up, so didn't realize they had left these power-saving options on.  

Really appreciate the reminder to look at these settings. It seems to have done the trick.

Cheers,

Britt

[jon.bell]

Hey Brittnell,

Woo-hoo! Glad that worked for you! (My pet peeve with Windows 10 is when I've set it to not auto-update my machine overnight, but it sometimes resets that and reboots my machine when I'm doing a rendering. I don't care if aliens are invading Planet Earth and rebooting my PC is the only way to stop them -- I don't want Microsoft to reboot my machine without asking my permission, period.) 🙂

Good luck with your CG work!