GBPVR will not wake up XP computer from sleep

[keith_leitch]

After six months in storage, my faithful GBPVR-based media centre has developed one very odd behaviour: a scheduled recording will no longer wake it from sleep, as it always has before. I know that sleep problems are common, but the reason that this is so odd is because other scheduled tasks wake it just fine, as does a button on my remote control. Has anyone solved a similar problem?

Before anyone asks: yes, I am still using GBPVR, and I have little choice. The main purpose of my media centre is to simulate American TV channels by streaming live feeds from the internet. Unless someone has created a plugin for NPVR (or Mediaportal) that is similar to CarpeVideo's GraphRecorder, I will have to keep using the legacy system. I hope someone can help with it.

[pcostanza]

Have a look at the MCE Standby Tool.
Sometimes an update has caused problems with my system sleeping and once, just updating my BIOS to the latest version set it back right.

[keith_leitch]

Have a look at the MCE Standby Tool.
Sometimes an update has caused problems with my system sleeping and once, just updating my BIOS to the latest version set it back right.

Thanks for your reply. I will look into a BIOS update. I have always used, and am still using, the MCE Standby tool.

[keith_leitch]

Thanks for your reply. I will look into a BIOS update. I have always used, and am still using, the MCE Standby tool.

Sadly, the BIOS update made no difference. However, your mention of MCE made me remember that it has a "Hibernate" setting, which I tried on a lark. Surprisingly, that worked; GBPVR is again resuming the system. I prefer to use hibernate, anyway, for the additional power savings, as well as it being easier on the memory strips.

However, a side-effect of this is that an API-checking applet that Slimm gave me no longer works. It was written to help the O/S determine whether it was resumed manually (as if from a keystroke) or automatically (as if from a scheduled task). Apparently, it can do that when using Suspend, but not when using Hibernate. Does anyone know of a way for my batch file to detect how the system was resumed?

[mikeh49]

mvallevand's Network Recorder for NPVR pretty much duplicates GraphRecorder using Sage plug-ins. I use it to capture firewire from the STB using essentially the same graph that I used in GraphRecorder. It's been reliable for me.

If you can use NPVR's ts file writer, it should work for you. It's in the wiki and on the plug-in forum.

If possible, you should try Win7. It has much better power management in my experience.

[keith_leitch]

mvallevand's Network Recorder for NPVR pretty much duplicates GraphRecorder using Sage plug-ins. I use it to capture firewire from the STB using essentially the same graph that I used in GraphRecorder. It's been reliable for me.

If you can use NPVR's ts file writer, it should work for you. It's in the wiki and on the plug-in forum.

If possible, you should try Win7. It has much better power management in my experience.

Thanks! It's actually only the functionality of ExternalRecorder that I need. I use GraphRecorder for that purpose only, because I found it more reliable. I was going to try a Win7 upgrade on my next break from work, so on your advice, I will see if I have time to also try NPVR with Network Recorder. In the meantime, before those holidays arrive, any advice on solving this issue would be welcome.

[mvallevand]

NetworkRecorder doesn't work like the ExternalRecorder, but it doesn't look too hard to modify it to simply spawn a program using the same parameters as shown on the ExternalRecorder wiki. Let me know when you have some time to test and I will add see what I can do.

Martin

[mikeh49]

If I understand, you want to use an "external" command line recorder, right? You might check with Martin, NetworkRecorder might already be able to do that, or he could "whip up" something for you.

Back in my XP days with GBPVR, I had no problem with hibernate, but sleep never worked well on the motherboards I used. In my experience, the incidence of power problems is directly proportional to the number of apps on the box. With a basic install of XP and only GBPVR, I had no problems.

BTW, Win7 has more power related features as far as monitoring what caused a system to awaken. I can't remember them now, but found them pretty easily Googling. I found a lot of scheduled tasks that Win set up (by default, I think) that were waking up the system in the middle of the night and day. I was able to ID them with logging from a batch file. Sorry I can't remember more.

[keith_leitch]

NetworkRecorder doesn't work like the ExternalRecorder, but it doesn't look too hard to modify it to simply spawn a program using the same parameters as shown on the ExternalRecorder wiki. Let me know when you have some time to test and I will add see what I can do.

Martin

That's very generous; thank you. I will be in touch in early December.

Mike: I am sold on Windows 7, but I just don't have time now to start a rebuild. I also understand that sleep and suspend issues are standard headaches under XP, but I have always been lucky with this box. The mysteries are that a), everything worked beautifully when I put it in the closet, and, b) it's only GBPVR that won't wake the box up from sleep. I did have to replace one memory strip upon my return, so I suspect that is the culprit. This theory seems to be borne out by the fact that the system will awaken from hibernate (disk-based) but not sleep (memory-based).