HDMI: Windows 7 Weirdness

[imilne]

Like many others, my HTPC suffered from several HDMI handshake-related issues, mainly loss of audio after coming out of sleep mode. After a particularly frustrating 2009 Christmas, I finally solved all of these problems by throwing money at a Gefen HDMI Detective, which tricks the PC into thinking the TV and amplifier are connected at all times, even when they're not. It was expensive, but worth every penny in WAF points.

That same PC, which runs GBPVR on XP, can now dual-boot into a clean Windows 7 install ready for NPVR testing, but with the following strange issue:

- PC is on and running
- TV/Amp either get turned off or inputs are switched
- PC continues to run
- When the TV/Amp are turned on again, the PC goes *into* sleep mode

There's two weird things here. a) why is it even happening at all; it seems to be the reverse of every HDMI-related problem I've read about, and b) why isn't the Gefen stopping it from happening.

I'm sure it's probably solvable, but I'm at a loss as to where to start investigating. I'm assuming an EDID override won't help, as that's just a software solution to what the Gefen offers. Telling the PC to "never sleep" doesn't help (and ultimately I do want it to be able to sleep).

I really don't get it. How can whatever weird signal it's getting when the TV and amp turn back on force it into sleep mode? It can't be a hardware fault, because it doesn't happen with XP.

The PC's HDMI output is from an ATI HD4550, sitting in an Asus M2A-VM motherboard.

Iain

[pBS]

i bet it's going off the power switching on-off of the hdmi connection, and hdmi detective may not mimic the power side, just send the edid..
i have a cmd to totally disable suspend thru a policy,it should work to disable suspend, then could be enabled again on the fly...
maybe try diff ati driver?
or driver settings.. [i bet there's a reg entry that could force it to appear connected always]
it's just finding the info that's hard..

but how it's signaling windows to sleep is odd...is it really reproduceable every time?
open notepad and add a few chars and see if it lets it shutdown immediately...
you may see a dialog that tells you what is trying to shut it down...[along with what is keeping it open-notepad]

there's also in win7 some very useful tools in powercfg...
i think it's like powercfg -events or something that lets you see what causes sleep,wake etc...
run powercfg /? for help or search..

[imilne]

Yep, it's reproducible every single time.

I've been messing about on and off with Windows 7 on this HTPC for most of the year, so it's probably been through several different ATI drivers in that time, and it's always been the same.

I think I may have got to the bottom of it though. While fiddling with the power settings, I discovered that changing "What to do when the sleep button is pressed" from "sleep" to "do nothing" seems to stop it from happening. I then found entries in the event log for "Sleep Reason: Button or Lid". It still doesn't really make sense though, especially as the case doesn't even have a sleep button.

Also, each time the PC comes back from sleep - either intentionally or via this silly problem, Media Center would launch itself. It still launches even with forced sleep "fixed" as above, probably because a weird sleep/resume event is still being generated. As I don't plan to use 7MC, that was solved by disabling it with "Turn Windows features on or off". Perhaps there's a better way though? It might be nice to still fire it up (manually) from time to time.

Iain

[pBS]

have you ever used Mce Standby Tool? it could have been set to do this...even if not running...
i've been trying to perfect my power helper app so have been messing with power stuff quite alot lately..
it sounds to me like something's been set to kick this off, as usually mce doesn't auto-start upon wake, but MST has a setting to make that happen..as well as other actions upon wake..like something's set to kick it off...
i setup mst to watch idle times and when i wasn't using it, i noticed some things were still happening, like it would mess up my auto-logon...

btw, sleep button is only on keyboard [or mce remote]...wireless? maybe a keyboard wake activation issue..
and nothing else in your system can blast ir signals? maybe hide the remote ir eye and see if still happening..

[imilne]

nothing else in your system can blast ir signals? maybe hide the remote ir eye and see if still happening..

Hmm, I guess plasmas are known to do this. It's possible it's doing something at the point it turns on, but it can happen if I just switch inputs on the amp, although maybe not as consistently. When I return to the HTPC input, the PC goes into sleep. In XP, I don't use the standard MCE remote driver, I've got the HIP one instead. I'll experiment some more tomorrow and see what happens...

Iain

[pBS]

hmm, that driver may be the one kicking it off, as it always had problems with power modes...
the MS driver is better, the alternate drv is unnecessary in xp...control and blasting are more stable with ms driver...

i use irss in win7 for mce with blasting...works a charm...and i was a staunch HIP supporter...HIP just won't work well in vista/7 until it becomes a service..
[which irss is by design] as only services are allowed to talk to ms driver in vista/win7..

btw, hip also has power control stuff, "scheduler" so make sure nothing is in there too..

[imilne]

Turns out that it *is* the MCE receiver that's causing it - good call on suggesting that!

It must be getting a "sleep" command when the plasma screen turns back on. Weird. If I unplug it, then everything is fine.

I still want to use HIP, so I'll need to find out how to get it running with x64 Windows 7. A quick google seems to suggest just using it with the built-in driver, but a) I haven't managed that yet, and b) I'll need to find a work-around for the sleep issue if I use that. I can always fall back on 32bit Windows if needed though.

[imilne]

Had a quick look at IRSS and it looks like it might be a suitable replacement for HIP on x64 Windows, but I can't suss out how to launch anything with it (using Translator). Does it have something similar to HIP's "magic button" that allows just a single remote key to be able to launch any of multiple applications? I've also read worrying messages saying it doesn't work fullscreen with apps like PowerDVD. It won't be much good to me if it can't control PDVD.

[pBS]

oh good luck with hip on x64 win7....
not sure if irss has an equivalent of the 'magic button' but it has had all of the other features of hip so far..
easy to map 1 button to an app..or have separate keysets for each app..
i'm thinking a macro or something, like 'magicbutton' + 1...
it sure seems to control pvrx2 in full screen exclusive mode so i can't see pdvd being a problem...
[i plan on using pdvd from custom menu item when moving to npvr also so will check that soon]
i'm using all post codes for pvrx2/npvr now and it works great..i even made a more flexible blaster helper app for irss..

[imilne]

Yeah, I don't think it's a matter of luck with HIP on x64 Windows; it looks like it just won't work full stop, because it can't (or isn't allowed to) talk to the MCE driver because it's not a service.

The macro idea is an interesting one. Failing that, I guess I could write my own "magic button" app that lets me pick which application I want to launch.