383060 - Prevent computer from going into standby mode while a download is active

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 356762

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, enhancement)

Description

[Martin F.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

When you start downloading a large file and leave the computer, you probably don’t want to return and see the file is not finished because the computer went into standby mode. In many cases it’s even impossible to resume the download and you have to start over.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set your computer to go into standby mode after a certain period not being used
2. Start a download which takes longer than this period
3. Wait
Actual Results:  
The computer goes into standby mode

Expected Results:  
The computer should not go into standby mode until the download is finished

Comment 1

[Martin F.]

Oh, I forgot that I still use Firefox 1.5 on that computer because there was no update to Firefox 2 yet. I haven’t tried it with a later version.

Comment 2

[Stefan Breunig]

I can confirm this with a recent nightly of Firefox 3, albeit not the current one and I can't remember which one it was. I'll try this again now and will report if it still fails.

Comment 3

[Stefan Breunig]

Still fails on
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a9pre) Gecko/2007102705 Minefield/3.0a9pre

Although the DM doesn't realize this and still states the file as "currently downloading", it is possible to pause and then resume that file (given the server supports it).

How do/can I confirm this?

Comment 4

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Resolving old UNCONFIRMED Download Manager bugs as INCOMPLETE.  If you still see this issue, please reopen.

To mark all these bug changes as read, filter on ONOMATOPOEIA.

Comment 5

[Martin F.]

I still see this with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20090823 Minefield/3.7a1pre.

I set standby timeout to 1 minute, started to download ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/firefox-3.7a1pre.en-US.win32.zip (which would take about 3 minutes), waited one minute and then the computer entered standby mode.

Comment 6

[James May [:fowl2]]

There would have to be some way of determining the reason for going into the power save mode. 

Clearly vetoing a suspend request triggered by inactivity is sensible, but stopping a critical battery shutdown or lid close event would be... undesirable.

People don't appreciate their laptops baking themselves or running out of battery and not saving.

Comment 10

[Francesco Montorsi]

As I said in Bug 544648, it's very easy to fix this problem: Firefox should call the Windows API SetThreadExecutionState() (see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa373208%28VS.85%29.aspx) to tell
Windows to prevent the PC from going to sleep when a download start and then call it again to allow sleeping when the download ends.

Why is this bug still marked as UNCONFIRMED after 3 years from first report?
Could anyone with the necessary privileges set it to CONFIRMED?
I also think the severity of this bug should be raised: it's very important to save energy nowadays and thus it's important that all users strive to set the most stringent power-saving options. In turn developers should strive to make it easier to users to use stringent power-saving options, i.e. they should make correct use of the SetThreadExecutionState() API.

I'm really worried that the bugs I report against Firefox or other Mozilla products always get so little attention.
I always end up with workarounds.
To all users: I suggest downloading the "Insomnia" utility (see http://blogs.msdn.com/delay/archive/2009/09/30/give-your-computer-insomnia-free-tool-and-source-code-to-temporarily-prevent-a-machine-from-going-to-sleep.aspx) and manually run it whenever you start downloading a large file.

Comment 11

[mike98765]

Maybe we should all return to MS Internet Explorer and boycott Firefox instead of using absurd and not very helpful workarounds.

Comment 12

[Christian Lampson]

I see this problem is still unconfirmed.
Problem still exists in the latest update on my computer.
It makes unhappy to see a lot of updates but obviously it is no problem for Firefox developes due to fast internet. For REAL users it is a problem. I tried to download file of 2GB which take 2 hours. Even restart of download the last part does not work. Download starts from the beginning.