Vostro 5590 + WD19 power button

Question

I have a Dell Latitude e5540 (work laptop) and a Vostro 5590 (home laptop) in my home office. Both of them are tethered to WD19's (the Latitude has a WD19TB). Both share a common monitor and the laptops are always closed (lid down).

The thing I like about the WD19 is the remote power button which allows me to power up/down without opening the lid. On the Latitude it behaves as advertised, a true shutdown/startup when pressed. I can verify this by looking at Task Manager -> Performance -> CPU and noting the Up-time value. It resets to zero on each power up/down event.

The Vostro also responds to the power button. However, it seems to go into a sleep mode instead of a true power cycle. Again, looking at Up-time verifies that it has never really rebooted; the clock keeps running. When I first noticed this it said it was up for 13+ days when I knew I hit the power button to shut it down many times before.

I want to do a real power-off since Windows tends to get memory leaks, etc. that slow down overall performance unless it gets a fresh start.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

Thanks,

Marc

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@cramcram Do you have Fast Start enabled on only one of them? If so, then shutting down a system hibernates the kernel (not all memory space like regular hibernation) in order to allow faster booting, but the kernel is not actually restarted in that case, which might be why your Uptime counter isn’t reset. Ironically a restart is now more “comprehensive” than a shutdown.

And do you observe this discrepancy in behavior when testing with the built-in Power buttons?

jphughan · Answer

@cramcram  on systems that support it, the WD19's Power button mimics the behavior of the built-in Power button, which can be configured in various ways.  So you would likely notice this same behavioral discrepancy when using the Power buttons actually built into the respective systems at the moment.  If you want to change what the Power button does on the Vostro, go to Start > Settings > System > Power & sleep > Additional power settings > Choose what the power buttons do.  Change it to Shut Down instead of Sleep.

jphughan · Answer

@cramcram  and on a general note, if you're experiencing 'memory leaks' or performance degradation that requires a reboot to resolve, you have one or more misbehaving applications on your system.  I maintain several systems that run 24/7 and are pretty much only ever rebooted for monthly Windows updates, to say nothing of the huge installation of Windows-based servers in the world that typically run the same way.  If you're basing that claim on just watching the memory utilization figure in Task Manager and seeing that it starts out lower after a restart, then that's not evidence of a memory leak.  Windows will use memory that would otherwise go unused in order to cache content, such as pre-loading applications that it thinks you're likely to launch based on its observations of when you tend to use certain applications.  It will give up memory it's using for that purpose if something else actually needs it, but the design principle is that if your system has a bunch of memory that would otherwise go unused, then Windows may as well use it in order to deliver some sort of performance benefit, otherwise you're just got a bunch of memory sitting there doing nothing.  That's why for example if you have a system that only has 4 GB of RAM and you observe that it's using X amount of RAM when idle, and then you upgrade the system to 8 GB of RAM, you will immediately see that Windows will consume more RAM at idle, because it will use some of the additional memory to cache more content.  As I write this, my system only has my browser, email client, and iTunes open in the foreground, with only some minor background applications and services -- and my system shows 8.8 GB of RAM in use out of 32 GB installed.  That doesn't mean that if I suddenly reduced my system memory to 8 GB of RAM, I wouldn't be able to run those applications concurrently.  It just means Windows wouldn't be able to cache as much content in the background.  But again, that's not evidence of a memory leak or failure to release allocated memory.

cramcram · Answer

I should have mentioned. I *do* have the action set to shutdown for both battery and plugged in modes (on both laptops).   Marc

cramcram · Answer

Bingo!  Disabling Fast Start now causes a true shutdown. Thanks,   Marc

jphughan · Answer

@cramcram  glad you're happy.  Fast Start has been enabled by default since Windows 8, fyi.

cramcram · Answer

Actually the work laptop (Latitude) does have fast startup enabled as well.  However, as evidenced by the up-time display it really does do a real shutdown.   Marc

jphughan · Answer

@cramcram  in that case something might be preventing it from ever resuming using the hibernated kernel, in which case it would fall back to doing a typical startup.  Could be an organizational policy enforced on that system or some application they run.  I can't be sure from over here on the other end of the Internet just exchanging forum posts with you.  In any case, you can always get a fully clean start by restarting if you really feel the need to do that on some sort of regular basis, although considering that as I mentioned above, Fast Start has been enabled since Windows 8, I question the need for a 'proactive' full shutdown.  But it's your PC, of course.

cramcram · Answer

Yes, the work laptop is configured by corporate IT and may have some custom registery settings, etc.

Santirico · Answer

Hello!A question about Vostro 5590 and the Wd19 Dock.We have this doubt because it does not appear among the compatible models of the Dock.The laptop is well charged by the USB-C port

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Vostro 5590 + WD19 power button

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