waking up a PC reliably

[observer_11]

I use low watt/passively cooled components and leave my HTPC on 24/7. I initially tried (couple years ago) to go the wake/sleep route but the bottomline is a LOT of problems and inconsistency. Getting 100% reliablility for wake/sleep across all the different hardware, OS, software apps, network, remote, driver,etc combinations is just not gonna happen. And if by some miracle and a lot of time and enargy you did get it working 'somewhat' reliably, don't count on it staying that way through Microsoft updates, service packs, new drivers/hardware, hotfixes,new runtimes/.net patches, etc ...I think you get the picture.

Depending on your usage patterns you may actually save power leaving the system on 24/7 with some lower watt/passive components. The added bonus for me is my HTPC is also our network fileserver and download machine so different clients can count on the machine being awake whenever needed. This also means my other client PCs are never left on to record or download so more power savings again.

That's just my 2 cents

[K.S.]

yeah, it's not the easy way to go (never said that) but i would like to contradict :p

I use low watt/passively cooled components and leave my HTPC on 24/7....

Depending on your usage patterns you may actually save power leaving the system on 24/7 with some lower watt/passive components. The added bonus for me is my HTPC is also our network fileserver and download machine so different clients can count on the machine being awake whenever needed. This also means my other client PCs are never left on to record or download so more power savings again.

1. if you want to have a system 24/7 low watt/passively is definitely the way to go, i'm not gonna take any other way for future systems i'll build
2. my main system needs 7W in soft-off/standby vs. 110W on-idle. even with new HW you wont get below 45W on-idle. simple example: if your box is running 24/7 (with 45W on-idle) vs 12/7 (each half 45W on-idle & 5W S3)your wasting 170kWh each year. i would have to pay about 34€ more for that energy. in my current setup the difference is a bit more. max. 8 hours usage per day means 16 hours wasted about 100W => 570kWh / 113€ per year.

admittedly that's still not worth the time spent to achieve that savings but it makes a difference. as a side note: the MTBF remains the same, so your system may die on you (MB/HDD/PSU) simply because of old age. i never had a faulty MB/HDD/PSU because of old age. i have to throw them away because they became obsolete.

i dread the time my current SDTV fails of age... why? read my post above

[gEd]

your black screen after resume is already "fixed" with gEd's StartGBPVR, this link http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2...ostcount=3 will lead you to a fix and additional goodies

well it's not fixed for me LOL!!
I just added the dll call to my script as it was reported to work but it doesn't help on my pc. I'll have to try and debug the problem.

Are you using my script from the linky or did you roll you own version?

[edit]: scratch that, I found I had the value set to 0x00000007 in my copy of the script instead of

DllCall ("kernel32.dll","long","SetThreadExecutionState","long",0x00000002)

hopefully it will work for me as well now!
[/edit]

The black screen problem (for those not familiar with this problem) only happens when XP wakes up to record a show rather than when the pc has been woken up by the power switch. It detects that it has been woken by a scheduled task and therefore doesn't enable the user interface (screen). A kick of the mouse sorts it out but this is far from ideal.

After being very happy with hibernator for 12 months, it decided to stop working on me last week. I can;t think what I had done to change things but hibernator.exe would simply not run by itself.

Rather than roll xp back, I decided to try the MCE standby tool referred to above and so far I have not had any problems at all. Hibernator (like xp power settings) used to occasionally decide to powerdown when I was watching a recording over the network, despite my setting low network usage in the hibernator profile.

[dark_half]

K.S. if you wouldn't mind I would like to see what you have going. It might not save much money but you try and tell my wife that All she can see is 2 computers (server / client) dedicated to GBPVR running 24/7. Plus I really hate to just give up. It really drives me crazy not to be able to figure something out even if it is a complete waste of time. I think most everyone here just can not live the PVR machine alone and are constantly tweaking and sometimes breaking it.

Currently I am playing with a modified version of the batch files dfdario posted ( http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2...ostcount=1 ) plus a few addtional things on the client and server. It is working but I am trying to fine tune it. I would like to see what you have going and either incorporate it or replace what I am currently doing

I got the no display solved by using gbpvrwake.exe which runs wake.cmd that then runs fullresume.exe. ( http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2...stcount=23 )

[K.S.]

Currently I am playing with a modified version of the batch files dfdario posted ( http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2...ostcount=1 ) plus a few addtional things on the client and server. It is working but I am trying to fine tune it. I would like to see what you have going and either incorporate it or replace what I am currently doing

dfdario's hibernate.bat looks like an early version of my postprocessing.bat, glad to see that my headaches i got when i wrote that wheren't for nothing & that batch comes to use by others
serverside i've added the bleepbloop plugin stuff to that

I got the no display solved by using gbpvrwake.exe which runs wake.cmd that then runs fullresume.exe. ( http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2...stcount=23 )

that's a bit of overkill. in StartGBPVR it's one DLLCALL
i'll post the whole stuff & code for the modified bleepbloop plugin.

[martint123]

The black screen problem (for those not familiar with this problem) only happens when XP wakes up to record a show rather than when the pc has been woken up by the power switch. It detects that it has been woken by a scheduled task and therefore doesn't enable the user interface (screen). A kick of the mouse sorts it out but this is far from ideal.

I've just rebuilt my system drive from scratch and standby/hibernate is back working again after a fashion.

I get the blank, no signal screen when waking to record a program, but don't have the option to kick the mouse or keyboard as there isn't one and the server is remote from my clients.

It records fine, serves up gbpvr to clients, I can ping it etc etc.
But I can't remote into it with my NetOp remote. If I run upstairs and plug a keyboard in and press a key and run downstairs again, I can......

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

[SuperGnome]

Before building my latest computer, I kept XP in sleep mode and my system recorded fine without ever waking up (at least I didn't see it). But, it would not update the EPG unless awake.

Maybe this is my issue. Suddenly the EPG doesn't auto update and every few days I have to manually update it. Missed some shows for my wife and if I can't get some free time to get this thing ironed out she'll go for a knife and come after me!

[pcostanza]

Maybe this is my issue. Suddenly the EPG doesn't auto update and every few days I have to manually update it. Missed some shows for my wife and if I can't get some free time to get this thing ironed out she'll go for a knife and come after me!

Maybe I can help you out with your wife and her knife :p You can most likely find whatever shows you miss here, http://www.eztv.it/frontpage.php
Though I've had no updating problems using Vista lately, I try to remember to manually update mine once a week just in case.

[K.S.]

dark_half, as i've promised, attached is my current patchwork

But I can't remote into it with my NetOp remote. If I run upstairs and plug a keyboard in and press a key and run downstairs again, I can......

again: that DLLCALL is your solution. interaction through VNC (or keyboard simulation through sendkeys) is not regarded as human interaction by mircosoft & won't bring the monitor back on. you can either:
- use the fullresume.exe => start that exe on the server with psexec from the client when needed

OR

I got the no display solved by using gbpvrwake.exe which runs wake.cmd that then runs fullresume.exe. ( http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=2...stcount=23 )

OR

- use a autoit script to monitor for automatic resume which then makes that DLLCALL (like gEd's StartGBPVR which also monitors the recording service)

[martint123]

Thanks for that info, I'll give it a try over the weekend.

interaction through VNC (or keyboard simulation through sendkeys) is not regarded as human interaction by mircosoft & won't bring the monitor back on.

I know - the remote goes into standby when I'm remotely logged into it and running jobs on it! I have to turn powersave off when I'm remoting in :eek: