Cura won't stop windows from restarting the computer when it's printing.

Application Version

5.2.1

Platform

Windows 11

Printer

Anycubic Kobra

Reproduction steps

I started a print(via USB cable) for christmas russian doll mazes that were going to take 72 hours. The printer was doing great and everything was working fine.
During my viewing of twitter feed my AMD graphics driver crash/bug report tool popped up and Cura was only a white screen but the printer was still printing so I just left it, there was about 12 more left until it finished.
I went to the grocery store so I could get ready for the holiday cooking.
When I came home from shopping just now my computer had restarted which closed cura and stopped the printing wherever it was at the time it restarted. It shouldn't have restarted because this isn't the first time this happened to me. It's just this time I don't have the money to buy more filament to print these gifts to be done on time. Because even though the damn thing was over 83% finished I HAVE TO START THE WHOLE F*CKING THING OVER AGAIN AND ALL THAT FILAMENT IS NOW GARBAGE, HALF A ROLL, ALMOST HALF A KILO!!!! Sorry, I'm just so pissed off because normally windows won't restart when there is something happening that the computer needs to finish first, but now even though I've turned off as many of the updates as I can and told it to not do anything unless I do it manually, it still restarted the damn computer while the 3D printing was still printing.

Actual results

You get about 85% of a 72hrs print unfinished and can't restart it. So then also, have about half a kilo in filament wasted.

Expected results

What should have happened is Cura should be telling Windows "HEY I'M PRINTING SOMETHING DON'T FU*KING RESTART THE DAMN COMPUTER UNTIL I SAY I'M DONE AND READY." And Cura should be doing this every second the printer is printing.

Now, I know you're thinking, why doesn't he just use an sd card, well for some reason the sd card that came with the printer won't work because when I plugged it into my computer my computer said it was corrupted and attempted to fix it but the couldn't and after that it wouldn't work again. The person who bought the 3D printer for me said it's okay just use the usb port and cable with your computer and print that way.....okay. So that's why I print my stuff using cura with the AnyCubic Kobra. cura.log

Checklist of files to include

[X] Log file
[ ] Project file

Additional information & file uploads

I'm really sorry for the attitude and the rest. It's just I am not able to afford just throwing away half a roll of filament and don't know how to restart the printing from the exact point it left of at. The printer is still hot and waiting but I don't know how to get all the models in the exact same positions that they were in before the restart of the computer. cura.log

Sorry to hear that. Ultimaker gave up on USB printing because of things like this. It is still included in Cura because some folks like to use it. I don't think it's been maintained since 2017 or 2018??. Since no UltiMaker printers use USB printing I think it is unreasonable to think that they should put money into fixing the plugin so the owners of 3rd party printers (like me) can use it.

Cura runs ON Windows and not the other way around. When Microsoft pushes out a late night update to Windows then the computer is going to reboot and kill a print. If the computer decides to go to sleep it is going to power down the USB and when it comes back up the printer is going to reboot. That's why printing from the SD card is the most reliable way to print. My Ender will only accept an SD card that is 32gb or smaller. I've had to re-format the card several times. I currently use a regular SD card-to-micro-SD adapter so I don't have to use that tiny POS that came with the printer as I kept losing it.

I'll leave the bug label on this for you but I'm really not seeing a Cura bug here. Cura is open source and if someone really wanted to be a hero they could "fix" USB printing so it would be reliable. Nobody seems to have taken up the challenge.

Totally off topic - I've skied Grand Targhee over in Driggs. It was a hoot. I was using my van as an RV and staying the parking lot and woke up to 4 feet of fresh powder the second morning.

Nothing can stop Windows from restarting when it wants to, else tools would exist explicitly for that purpose. The only flag to even attempt it are the "busy hours" as defined by the OS (which cannot be set more than 18 hours apart at most) - even maintaining 95%+ CPU load (via video transcoding) and a sizeable amount of consistent network bandwidth use isn't enough to make it realise that you might actually be doing something. Ask me how I know.

If you're using Windows Professional you can at least tell it not to automatically download and apply updates, which lets you decide when you want to even open up the possibility of unexpected restarts. Within GPEdit go to "Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update\Manage end user experience" (Win11 - Win10 and earlier may be somewhere different) and set "Configure Automatic Updates" to either Enabled with a value of 2 or Disabled, rather than Not Configured. Note there are registry entries which can do this but they only work on Pro and above - Home editions will ignore it.

Thank you both for the reply. The only reason that I am really upset about it is because I'm a disabled US Air Force Veteran who can't work due to fracturing my spine about 13 years ago or so, anyway the VA says I'm only 20% disabled and since I'm single my monthly disability compensation has just recently finally made it to $300. Yup I live on only $300 per month. Anyways, so in 2021 a youtuber made some videos on the new Anycubic line of 3D Printers, and he's pretty popular in the tech/electronic engineering space, and would say that he has so many 3D printers and I had made a comment on one of those videos saying that it would be pretty cool to get free 3D printers from company's all the time as well as letting him know my situation and he then said he'd donate one to me. So I never really thought he'd do it, but then he reached out to me for my email address so I gave it and then we spent almost a year going back and forth until in august he finally told me to pick out one off Amazon for under $300. I was blown away by his generosity and actually following through to what he said. The problem was that the only thing I knew about 3D printers was largely what I had been watching on his channel about Anycubic brand, so I picked the AnyCubic Kobra and about 2 weeks later it arrived at my house. Then I finished building it and hooking everything up, and followed the instructions to a "t" but after the bed auto level, setting the offset, and then printing the owl file on the SD card they sent with it, everything was perfect. Even the owl was great. But then, when I wanted to get the actual instruction manual which was on the SD card and getting the settings/profiles for Cura, I inserted the SD card into my computer via a USB adapter, instantly windows says that the files on the card were broken and that my only option was to fix it or not use it. So, I clicked on "fix it" and then while it was doing that up came a popup that says the data on the card is corrupt and that the card needed to be reformatted. So before doing that, I sent an email to the guy who bought it for me asking him what I should do, and in the meantime I went onto AnyCubic's website and support page when I found files that are available for download that are the same files that are supposedly on the SD card. So I'm feeling confident that after reformatting I'd be able to reinstall the files onto it. Then I get a reply from him saying that I could just use a USB cable from the printer to my computer over 25ft away, and I reply to him about the reformat and the files on their website and he says yeah it should be fine. So that's what I did. I started the reformat process and part way through it another windows popup says, that the media is corrupt and unable to be formatted correctly but of course, that happened after it deleted all the data that was on the card. So I got one of my old 8gb and 32gb SD cards and put the files on them after formatting and they all work fine but wouldn't show up on the 3D printer, and so now I've got no SD cards that will work with the printer and the original one is Fubar. So I bought a 30ft USB type B for the printer to plug in directly into my computer and for the most part it works great except when windows decides to restart itself while I'm out getting grocery's for me and my dog. So yeah, I feel like I'm stuck with this problem now and since I can't really afford a lot of filament I've only got 3 rolls and 2 are PETG and that makes me sick while it's printing....lol.

So yeah, that's about it. It frustrates me that this is happening and if I'd known that I'd have this kind of issues I'd of gotten the Solvol 3D printer that was right at the $300 mark and a dual extruder, however I'd not seen or heard about them and decided to go with what I knew and that might've been my mistake....lol.

Off topic reply: Great news about the fresh powder, hope it's fun for ya. I live in Boise, Idaho and the Bogus Basin which is the only ski resort near me is just barely open with the base depth at 30 inches and currently partly cloudy and feels like 25(o)F with the wind. Have fun.

The main issues with USB printing are...

Reboots due to Windows updates. If you aren't connected to the internet that should go away.
Stoppages due to buffer under-runs when the data doesn't flow fast enough. That doesn't happen a lot but it causes stuttering of the print head which leaves little blobs on prints. Generally it's a problem on curved surfaces. Cura's "Arc Welder" post-processor helps a lot with that.
Sometimes the data will surge from the computer and there will be a buffer over-run. Cura (and Pronterface) queried the printer every few seconds about the temperature. The M105 would get truncated by the printer buffer to M1 which is "Emergency Stop". Not a huge problem as a button click on the LCD would resume the print, but annoying none the less. That problem seems to have gone away so maybe the new generation mainboards are handling the data flow better.
Next is he "dropped port" problem. The Com port just closes for no apparent reason and the print stops. That is a show stopper because re-opening the port can cause a reboot (dependent on the firmware). Most firmware is configured to take the 5 volt circuit connect as an External Reset and so a reboot is mandatory.
Emergency Power Loss info is written to the SD. If the card isn't in the printer then you have disabled that function.

So those are some reasons why printing from the SD is much preferred. The Octoprint/RaspPI system has it's fans. To me that's like ABL...It's interesting but I personally don't require it.

The rules that I've found for my Ender and the SD card are:

File names must be shorter than 16 characters.
32gb is the maximum card size.
My older firmware will display the "long" filename but internally, the printer uses DOSS 8.3 naming convention.
I can print files from a sub folder but for some printers that is not advised. The gcodes need to be in the root folder.
Here is how my printer responds to an M20 "List the files on the SD" M20 Begin file list HOSEFE~1.GCO 7212213 HOSEMA~1.GCO 6653201 HOSECO~1.GCO 8004820 BONNET~1.GCO 9444605 DOLPHI~1.GCO 2940510 GL1800~1.GCO 2573709 End file list ok I print from the SD but I send the actual print commands over the USB rather than use the LCD button. The commands must use the DOS 8.3 file name convention. M23 HOSEFE~1.GCO tells the printer which file to print and M24 starts it. I mention all of that because maybe in there somewhere will be a clue to get your printer working from the SD again.

I'm going to remove the bug label and close this. If you have further questions or comments you can post them here and both myself and Asterchades will get notified.

Ultimaker / Cura