And I get that. I could easily change it but I'm not the one who is going to use the laptop. If it's a user who is downtown at the client site alot they probably want it to sleep often to save battery life.
The thing is I shouldn't have to change it. The OS shouldn't be doing that in the first place. It's not idle. It's downloading it's own updates that *I* told it to do. And if I'm right and that the system going to sleep while downloading is causing the SoftwareDistribution folder to corrupt then that's on MS and they need to fix their OS that supposedly "just works".
Change to never to accomplish your task and then ... change it back to the previous settings. Besides the "Power & Setting" menu has two sections one for "when plugged in" and the other for "when not plugged in". I doubt that having a laptop sleep when plugged in has no adverse impact on battery life since the charging function is ongoing if it is plugged in. Charging does not take place when the laptop is not plugged in and then "sleep" save on battery power.
If you're right that sleeping is causing the issue then your business leaders need to determine a policy for avoiding this issue. It's like with any OS, the user has to adjust their thinking to that of the OS. Doing otherwise is non-productive until the OS changes the way it functions. Since you have identified this issue your employer/business should make it known to Microsoft so that you know they are aware of it and can adjust the OS to act differently if it is in fact the root cause.
I can see a scenario where a machine has been infected and when it is plugged in it is preforming it assigned "nasty task" without let up and wouldn't go to sleep or shutdown at the trigger point because that "nasty" was doing it's thing. Not a secure situation.
Just my 2¢.