What is my laptop doing after the screen turns off?

[JerryGiese]

I bought a new notebook with windows 7 on it. When I let it sit idle, the screen turns off as it should. But, after the screen goes black, I can hear the CPU fan winding up to full speed as though it is suddenly busy doing something. I can't check to see what it's doing, because as soon as I hit a button to bring the screen back up, what ever it was doing stops. My questions are:

1. Does anyone know what my notebook is doing after the screen turns off? I suspect it's running some kind of automatic system maintenance.

2. Does anyone know how to get it to stop? I would like my notebook to remain silent when it's sitting idle.

 

[shg]

Maybe indexing files?

 

[xenou]

Possibly the fan runs to keep the system from overheating. Hard to say, but if you are letting the laptop sit idle then you can check the power options for things like turning of the screen, spinning down the disks, suspending, and so on ... to minimize power use. My old Lenovo R series was a little noisy but it's still running (must be about 7-8 years old now).

 

[RonaldD]

Try to adjust your power setting by clicking the control panel, and then the power options. You may also want to change your screen saver settings.

 

[PCRIDE]

if you didn't install an OEM version of the OS, its probably software junk running.