Anyone use sleep/wake

[BobAtTorrey]

I agree with McBain's goals and soccerdad's remarks. Especially in a warm climate, when the PC is running needlessly we're wasting energy twice --once for the PC and once for the air conditioning to remove that heat. My goal is to have it sleeping whenever possible.

However, I found that my Vista gbpvr server would sleep when manually invoked but would not sleep automatically because Vista prevents entering Sleep if Media Sharing is enabled. E.g., my music is on that PC and I access from my laptop so I had enabled Media Sharing.

TIP #1:
The fix is:
Control Panel --> Power Options --> "Change when computer sleeps" -->
"Change advanced power settings" -->"Multimedia Settings" --> "When sharing media" : CHANGE "Prevent idling to sleep" TO "Allow the computer to sleep"

TIP #2:
Now if that PC is sleeping when I want to access from my laptop music or other files on the gbpvr system, I need to run a program on the laptop that sends the 'Magic Packet' to tickle Wake-On-LAN (WOL).
There are lots of such programs available free. For my purposes I wanted a command-line program, not a gui, and found mc-wol ( http://www.matcode.com/wol.htm ). I have a batch file which calls mc-wol with the address of the system to be woken, so a single click on that batch file wakes the gbpvr system. Also, on the laptop I have an automated backup program which accesses the gbpvr system so I set the backup program to automatically invoke my batch file prior to running in case the gbpvr system is asleep.

[Pilot]

I've found MCEStandByTool to be really useful.

Helped a lot on my old motherboard, new one's probably much better but I still use this, it's become a standard tool in the box.

Thanks a ton for this, as it solve my Standby/Wake issues on my newly upgraded HTPC. I basically gutted it, and much to my dismay the Standby/Wake which was working perfectly with the older hardware started giving me problems both with sleeping and reliable waking.

Installed the MCE SBT and it's worked perfect ever since. My separate desktop computer was also having problems going into full S3 standby (fans would keep running even though it was set in the BIOS to use S3 rather than S1). Again, installed the MCE SBT and now it sleeps and wakes fine. I'm now toying with its other features, trying to get it to wake up when I hit the wireless USB keyboard, or I may go the WOL route using my Palm Tungsten|C's wi-fi (which is also my universal IR remote using NoviiRemote software)

So don't think that the MCE Standby Tool is only for MCE machines or even just HTPC's. It can improve the sleep/wake situation of just about any PC in my experience. It's going to become a standard on all my computers, too. Thanks again!

[gazoo]

This one thread has been more informative than months of scouring the site and collecting info, THANKS!

I'm currently using S3 standby on my client, but it doesn't always wake up to GBPVR, it's been dumping onto the desktop (this happened after .13 upgrade.) I made a custom button on my harmony remote to re-run GBPVR and that works great. However, I may try MCE SBT next..sounds awesome!

As far as the server is concerned, I have some advice to ask. I currently don't put the server in standby because of the following issues:

1) Don't know how to wake it up via remote (my client has a specialized remote that hooks up to the motherboard (pretty much "presses" the on button via remote), but my server does not)

2) I use my server as the storage for recorded programs and hi-def .mkvs. When my client comes on, I won't have much to see since the server may be off. I also have a NAS from dlink, but that runs all the time.


If I can solve those two problems, I would like to go the S3 route on the server as well. Will MCE SBT help with this? How can the client wake up the server - WOL? Sounds a like a pain in the *** to get those scripts going.

[HtV]

MC-wol works very well and it's very easy to set up. For my server the command looks like this: "C:\Program Files\WOL\wol.exe" 00112F43xxx
the last part being the Mac adres of the system to wake up, that's all.
You could put this command in the start-up folder, so when you start the client the server will be started aswell.

Hans

[Pilot]

If I can solve those two problems, I would like to go the S3 route on the server as well. Will MCE SBT help with this? How can the client wake up the server - WOL? Sounds a like a pain in the *** to get those scripts going.

MCD SBT allows me to do this as simply as opening up a network share on the server from the client computer...wakes the server right up every time. That's also how I plan on doing the same with my Palm PDA and the server. I just checked the NIC box in MCD SBT that allows selective devices to wake up the PC.

It's admittedly not going as easily for my USB based wireless keyboard, but I haven't given up yet.

[martint123]

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I have done nothing - honest. WOL won't wake my server up anymore It has been working for years.. Restored from a couple of days ago and the same...................

[HtV]

Firewall turned on?

[merc82]

My system has been having problems with resuming from power saving mode, both S3 and S4, since I "upgraded" my video card from ATI 7200 to Nvidia 6200.

I have no problems going to sleep but it frequently (though unpredictably) hangs when coming out of hibernation at the Resuming Windows screen. The machine doesn't have to be waking for GBPVR to record, it also may hang if I use WOL.

I don't believe my problem is GBPVR related as there are many posts on the Internet of Nvidia users with this issue. I've tried many different drivers with no luck.

I read an interesting Microsoft KB article that described a problem resuming from sleep when two IDE hard drives are installed. I have two IDE HDs but the proposed resolution didn't work for me. An attempt to eliminate the smaller of the two hard drives didn't work as my partitioning tool had a problem moving data to make room for a new partition. That may have been caused by some of the massive file I have on my drive.

I haven't had any success with the MCE tool though it does log the sleep activity something the XP logs don't do.

System info:
XP with SP3 (problem also existed with SP2)
P4 on an Asus P4B533 with 1 GB RAM
Two IDE drives, 40 GB (OS and apps) and 320 GB (data)
HVR-1600
Nvidia 6200
GBPVR 1.2.13

[martint123]

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I have done nothing - honest. WOL won't wake my server up anymore It has been working for years.. Restored from a couple of days ago and the same...................

Ends up being one of the cheap, unsupported DVB-S tuners I have. It looks like it was was holding the PME signal on the pci bus. A razor blade has fixed it! I won't be holding that line down again :eek:

[CureForSanity]

I've found MCEStandByTool to be really useful.

It tweaks the idle detection and is optimised for PVR type use so helps to prevent unwanted sleeping.

Lets you do a daily/weekly/monthly reboot and makes configuring which devices will wake the pc simple.

Helped a lot on my old motherboard, new one's probably much better but I still use this, it's become a standard tool in the box.

I'm beginning to sound like an ad here so I'll stop now
(I have no connection with the author BTW)