I have seen the problem come and go a few times over the past few years, including with simple clients (and there are many old forum posts about it). However things have behaved normally for quite a while on my system, until very recently (last few weeks) when the server sometimes went to sleep after just one or two tracks, as described.
Yes, I too have seen those posts, and over many different versions of MC, but after reading many of these I've been left confused as to what the expected behavior is supposed to be.
I have not nailed down a causal sequence. Being intermittent in my case today, it is hard to trouble shoot. Could be a MC bug, a recent change in Windows, or even depend on how long the server PC has been asleep before WOL (affected by Windows transition between different sleep states?).
Yes, these are very difficult to diagnose. For me, it never worked so it is not a windows change.
But, when running directly from the server PC is obviously kept awake by MC and powercfg /requests shows the activity. I don't remember ever seeing the powercfg request when client is being served data (I'll have to double check).
Have you checked MC System Info > Power?
No. Didn't realize that even existed until you mentioned it and I've only checked via windows powercfg command. I'll take a look at that and see if it provides anything additional.
Does problem ever occur before Windows active power plan is supposed to put server to sleep, or only after the Windows time out?
Always seems to correlate with power plan's configured sleep setting.
Exactly which MC version are you running today?
31.0.10
Re Beta team: I have no special view of MC's inner workings, just relaying my experience as an end user and general expectations.
Thanks. Was never really sure what the "Beta team" signature meant, but I thought it provided you with means to communicate with developers.
I would really like to know what the expected behavior is in this situation.
Only one more piece of info is that I just leave the application open and don't start media server with OS start.