VPN server not working after sleep, or how I fixed what Microsoft neglected

So one day I found myself in situation that required VPN connection to my home computer from outside world. As I am running on Windows, I obviously decided to use build-in VPN server feature. Few minutes and I was done. Easy as that. I did what was needed and put computer in sleep. Next day I waked up the computer, tried to connect... and nothing. Quick search showed that this is known issue and workaround does not exits. Luckily, I had a bright moment and tried to manually suspend the responsible RemoteAccess service prior to sleep. Tried to suspend the computer, wake up, start the service and Violaaa! It worked. So I decided to create small utility that does just that.

The first approach was obviously to detect the system power state change and react accordingly. However it shortly turned out that this will not be possible, as the Windows gives to the applications exactly 2-seconds limit to prepare for system suspension and this is just not enough to stop the service. There I was forced to choose another approach and handle the automatic system suspension manually. Luckily, system provides way to register that computer is in use and should not be suspended. Also, there is API available to put Windows into sleep.

ServicePauser application

Therefore final solution was born. It acts as small systray application, started at system stratup, that handles the suspension of system as well as suspension of defined services. To make this app more universal, services to stop are user configurable. Also, the system idle time that results into suspensions is configurable, together with keywords prevents system suspension. To configure this, one should look into powercfg -requests.

Finally, application can be downloaded here: ServicePauser downloads

Please share your experience and tips for improvements in comments.