Power management

[DaveWC]

I've read & searched and I've seen some threads that talk around this subject but they all start from the pov of knowing how this works & needing further details. I'm not there yet. How do you setup your power management at the computer level? Do you just tell it to go to Standby after X minutes? I tried that but Sage isn't able to wake it up when a program recording begins. When my computer does wake up it goes to a User screen and requires an enter key to get past it. Is there something else that needs to be done to automate this?

[Djc208]

Well I can't really help with the power management but I can help with the screen saver. There's an option to password protect on resume under the screensaver options in the desktop properties screen.

But if Sage can wake the computer to record it won't matter if you get the login screen, the software will still be running in the background. It just makes using the interface awkward.

[steven017]

Hi Dave.

It COULD be as easy as that. One thing you should check if your computer is not waking from standby is that your computer is not set to hibernate. If it is, I'm pretty sure Sage can't wake your computer. That's where I would start.

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UPDATE:
I seem to be wrong about hibernation. It should work. I would focus on the info below. If your computer can't login after waking from standby, perhaps that is why you are not getting your recordings.

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You also need to set your system up to not ask for a user name and/or password when you login or to log you in automatically.

UPDATE:
Here's a link to a Microsoft KB article with instructions on how to set up XP to login automatically.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315231/en-us

Hope it helps.

Steve

[DaveWC]

Ok, I got it to wake without a login. Just for laughs I checked the wattage draw on this machine to see what Standby is doing for me. When it's running it draws 125w, in Standby it draws 80w. At my utility cost this will work out to $6.30 per month without Standby and assuming a 25% usage/75% idle factor only $4.60 per month with Standby. Now if hibernate will also wake up when the system detects a recording schedule the cost can be much less. I don't have any extenders yet so I'm not sure how the system reacts to an extender trying to access the HTPC when it's in Standby or Hibernate. I know that my other computers can't access the HTPC's hard drives while it's in Standby. Is there some command or action that has to be sent to wake it up?

[dgeezer]

First make sure that you have the network card set to be able to bring the pc out of standby. Assuming you have XP:

Start
Control Panel
System
Harware
Device Manager
Network adapters

Under the Power Management tab make sure that the "allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" box is checked.

This should alow other computers on the network to wake up your pc.

Also, go into your bios and enable S3 standby. This should greatly reduce your standby wattage.

[DaveWC]

Thanks. That worked. I'm not sure about the "Only allow management stations to bring the computer out of standby" setting. Initially I left that unchecked and when my machine went into standby it came out in about 20 seconds. I assume the network card was waking it up. So I checked this setting & it stayed asleep but I couldn't wake it with network activity from another machine. I'll tinker with it a bit more & see if I can get it to work.

[dgeezer]

Check out this site: http://www.exoid.com/?page_id=47

[DaveWC]

Everything seems to work fine except my computer kicks out of standby on its own right away. After doing so it's unable to go back into standby again unless I manually do it. The only devices that has the option checked to bring the computer out of standby are the nic & keyboard. So there must be some traffic on the nic that it interprets as activity and becomes active. From googling this topic I see that lots of others have the same issues.

[sleonard]

Waking up immediately is usually caused by a USB keyboard, mouse or other USB device.

S

[DaveWC]

I couldn't resolve this situation other then by checking the "Only allow management stations to bring the computer out of standby" setting. That kept sleeping computers asleep but they wouldn't wake with network activity from another machine so I had to use the magic packet method to wake them. It's not as streamlined but it works well & my power consumption has dropped a ton.