MCE Standby Tool 0.9.094 – Beta testing

[hveijk]

The new tab Win idle can be used to monitor and fine-tune Windows own idle detection (not the MST idle detection).

One or more program(s) require(s) the system
One or more program(s) require(s) the display

When a program prevents the system from suspending by requesting the display or the system MST now will show this.
Close all suspected processes (programs) and disable device drivers one by one until MST shows there is nothing blocking the suspend anymore.

The (wireless) network driver might be a good start.

PLEASE POST YOUR RESULTS IN THIS THREAD, THIS WILL BE A GREAT HELP TO OTHERS

Time since last user input

This is the time since the last mouse movement or keyboard/remote key press. These actions reset the Time remaining until suspend.

Time remaining until suspend

This is the time until the windows idle detection will suspend the system. A negative value means the Windows idle detection is disabled.

System idleness

This is the result of a calculation with a number of parameters that represent the usage of the system.
Typical parameters are CPU usage, network usage and disk usage.

When the system is not in use this number is 100%, the heavier the load the lower the number will be. Even negative numbers can occur.

MST colors this field red when the Windows idle detection decides the system is not idle.

Maximum idleness allowed

If the System idleness becomes lower than this threshold the Time remaining until suspend will be reset to the maximum.
This value can be changed to make Windows more or less critical on the idle detection.

MST also shows the time remaining until Windows will suspend the system, the current level of idleness and gives the ability to edit the threshold which Windows uses to determine if it’s idle.

Windows Vista uses the Unnattended sleep timeout to put the system back to sleep when woken for no reason. On some occasions this happenes when the system wakes for a scheduled recording. Resulting a missed recording. Change this to 6 minutes (default when selecting a sleep state, Windows default is 2 minutes) to prevent this from happening.

Another new tab is called Extender

It controls the long-awaited extender support. When checked this will force the system to enter Away mode instead of standby as long as an extender is connected. When the extender disconnects the system will suspend after 5 minutes.

Furthermore...

This version has some new USB settings for Vista and should be able to show the media center idle information on limited accounts as well.

The debug tab contains a new checkbox "Wake monitor/TV at resume", this should prevent the black screen on resume on some HDMI connected TVs (often combined with ATI videocards). Please report success/failure!

Please give me your feedback on the new features!

Download here: mst09094.exe

Check this thread for the newer (Windows 7 compatible) beta.

Herman

[sanjose88]

The new Win Idle feature helped me solve an intermittent problem. My Vista machine would sometimes go to sleep even when watching live TV. Win Idle showed me that under these conditions my system idleness was anywhere between 70 and over 80%. This would trigger the timeout which I'd accidently left at 1 minute after previous testing. Clearly my system could time out under these conditions. Resetting the idle time to 10 minutes seems to have cleared up this problem. Thanks for the great work.

Any word on the standby/Xbox 360 extender features?

[hveijk]

V0.9.093

Added the ForceHCResetOnResume uption (Vista only). This will reset the USB Host Controllers when the system resumes.
This might fix devices that fail on resume.

Please report any effects you experience with the new Vista USB options.

[RikP]

Just wanted to thanks you!

he winidle function told me that there was a program which required the system. After testing everything i found out it was the media sharing of media player.

Disabled it and my S3 is working like a charm again

Thanks again!

[aaen]

Hi,

Any chance of MST being able to point to the process that causes the "One or more programs requires the system" to go red? I have been killing processes and stopping services all nighe on my Mediacenter machine, but I just can't find the one that is blocking standby. I have killed all the services that I am able to, and I believe that I have my system running on the bare minimum, but no luck.

Could the problem be caused by drivers?

Great application! My wifes computer has refused to enter S3 for several months, but after installing MST the problems disappeared.

Thanks,

Rasmus

[wallaceff]

I don't really understand what the 'maximum idleness allowed' setting does. Can you explain this a bit more?

[hveijk]

aaen

I am searching for a way to identify the blocking process. I haven’t fount anything yet, it will be hard or even impossible to do so. (hints are welcome).

I have read someone solved his issue by killing a device driver. Give it a try and report your findings.

wallaceff

I have updated the first post, hopefully it makes things a bit clearer now.

[pvandam]

I've used the "Win Idle" tab extensively over the past couple of days on multiple machines (also on machines who do not serve as Media Center). I find this to be very usefull and it would indeed be great if the function would also identify which process is keeping the system busy, but I guess that is not easy.

First of all my Media Center. i had used early versions of MST, but didn't like that it was so visually closing the ehome interface.
Somehow in this new version, this is done more nicely, as it seems to keep the screen output black until ehome launches.
(this created a side problem for me, but more on that later).
I did some cleaning up of unneeded services and learned that my MCE box now always comes back with a clear "no" in the box where it says if programs need the system. In fact the only program ever to make this red (permanently) is the ehome shell itself.
This proves that MST has fully earned its existance, as even the core program from MCE (the shell) regularly block the idle counter.
With MST, my MCE box now sleeps a lot more and reliable, amazing. In a way this is what I would have expected out of the box.

Then one of the bedroom Vista machines. I had been puzzling with this one for some time why it stopped returning to standby after some time. So basically this machine was awake most of the time, as Windows Homeserver wakes it for backups... A little annoying for a system which is used 3-4 times a week.
With this machine it turned out to be Windows Sidebar related. Specifically, the picture slideshow gadget, even more specifically the picture slidehow gadget pointing to a network share for pictures.
Who would have thought of that, and how would I have found that if I did not have this easy tool to see the idle counter being blocked or reset.

I still have 2 more sytems to nail down. Yes, all my systems at home have trouble falling asleep automatically.
All for different reasons apperently as the ehome shell is not running on the others, nor do I have the slideshow gadget pointing to a network.
This somehow proves that "automatically returning to sleep" is a more generic problem, yet I do not yet see this acknowledged from the product itself.

So very valuable this Win Idle TAB as an extra aid in trying to make your system go to sleep easier.

The side problem it created is this:
After installing this version of MST, most of the times when starting both my TV and MCE at the same time, the TV would not "sync" to the MCE signal and the screen would stay black. I solved this by building a MCE start delay in my remote control "activity", so that the TV would finish first and then the MCE.
My assumption is that in my simultanious start of TV and MCE, MST would "black out" the video signal for a while to create the smooth start experience and exactly at that time, my TV would try to sync on the signal, but find something strange and therefore jump to a different mode. Not sure if the description makes sense, but this is how I interpreted it.
To date that seems to be the only side effect from using MST I see, with a good workaround in place.

[hveijk]

V0.9.094

- Extender support
- Makes the "Unattended sleep timeout" configurable
- Can wake the monitor/TV at resume

See the first post for more details

pvandam

Many thanks for your detailt report, this kind of information is very importand for the further development of MST.

The "Wake monitor/TV on resume" option might fix your TV issue!?


Herman

[ACraigL]

Hi,

I was the one that requested extender support on TGB forums... thanks for including this. As my extender is always connected anyway, I'm assuming there is no difference between this and simply setting away mode - always in the sleep settings? Is there something else going on here that makes it work differently?

Thanks!

[PerryvanderKnaap]

Hi Herman,

Is this version of MST Vista-only? Using the latest Beta version 0.9.0.94, I can't see the 'extender tab', even though I do have (Xbox360) extenders connected?
I am running XP Home.

Note: Post edited after realizing this was the English forum

[pvandam]

Thanks a lot, I will test the monitor wake in my configuration and report back.

I also don't see the unattended sleep time-out function in my 94 version.
May be related to Perry's comment, I also run on MCE XP.

[pvandam]

Yes, I just launched V94 on a Vista box and there I do have the Extender and Unattended sleep time-out options.

[b.danse]

After upgrading to v94 my vista mediacenter resumes immediatly.. "Resume for user interaction" Did a rollback to v93 and still the same issue. Any thought how I could fix this..?

ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:25.578 - PBT_POWERSETTINGCHANGE - MONITOR_POWER_ON: 1
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:25.640 - PBT_APMRESUMESUSPEND (Start user interaction)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:25.656 - PBT_APMRESUMESUSPEND done (15ms)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:25.656 - PBT_APMRESUMEAUTOMATIC (Resume for user interaction)
                              Reversed resume order
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:26.671 - Resuming userinterface
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:33.109 - eHome ResumeStart()
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:33.421 - Start at / Move to selected page
ma 11 aug 2008 13:01:39.447 - PBT_APMRESUMEAUTOMATIC done (13797ms)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:02:00.590 - User input detected (419843)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:02:26.350 - AwakeState: AS_MEDIACENTER
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:41.736 - PBT_POWERSETTINGCHANGE - MONITOR_POWER_ON: 0
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:42.730 - PBT_APMSUSPEND (Suspend from user interaction)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:42.768 - eHome is running, closing by sending terminate signal (Handle=000202B2 ProcessId=00001750)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:43.084 - Terminate signal send, result=0
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:43.650 - Close request successfully finished (859ms)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:43.650 - Delaying suspend for 1000 milliseconds.
ma 11 aug 2008 13:03:44.666 - PBT_APMSUSPEND done (1922ms)
                              ...
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:52.593 - PBT_POWERSETTINGCHANGE - MONITOR_POWER_ON: 1
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:59.656 - PBT_APMRESUMEAUTOMATIC (Resume for user interaction)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:59.656 - PBT_APMRESUMEAUTOMATIC done (0ms)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:59.656 - PBT_APMRESUMESUSPEND (Start user interaction)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:59.671 - Resuming userinterface
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:59.671 - eHome ResumeStart()
ma 11 aug 2008 13:04:59.671 - Start at / Move to selected page
ma 11 aug 2008 13:05:05.055 - PBT_APMRESUMESUSPEND done (5422ms)
ma 11 aug 2008 13:06:00.582 - AwakeState: AS_MEDIACENTER
ma 11 aug 2008 13:09:51.563 - User input detected (891328)

[pvandam]

I tested the Monitor wake up function and I don't think it applies to my TV setup.
I have Philips 32PF9830 connected through HDMI, but this TV has no monitor like power functions.
So for example I also cannot put the TV to sleep through a Windows monitor timeout.
(although I'm not sure if there is a difference between turning the monitor off and turning the video card off  and which one is used).

This TV generally does not really "talk" with the PC to agree on resolutions (EDID). So you have to be a bit lucky to find the right match.
I also had to configure a custom resolution (1207x677) to avoid the overscan.
You always have to "hope" that the TV jumps to 720P when the PC signal is offered, if it does you're OK, if it doesn't the screen goes black.

In the beginning when I reported to Philips that the Philips TV and the Philips MCE would sometimes not sync up and produce a black screen,
they confirmed that this would rarely be the case. In later models I think they implemented better communication to overcome this.
Later models might respond correctly to the wake monitor/TV function.

The fact that MST made the screen consistently black, can also be seen as a possitive. This way I was able to tweak the timing of the remote
to make it consistently work OK. :-)