[Mike Rivers]

One of mine wakes up!

As a compromise between waiting a couple of minutes to boot up and
leaving my studio computer on all the time, I've taken to putting it
into Standby when I close up shop for the day. I figure that will give
the disk drive and power supply a rest, reduce my carbon footprint
(and save a few pennies a month on my electric bill) and still give me
a computer when I want it rather than having to twiddle my thumbs
while it's booting.

The keyboard I have on this computer has three extra buttons on it,
one of which has a crescent moon on it. Maybe I just don't know what
this icon means, but I guessed that it was to engage the standby mode.
In fact, when I press the button, the "Windows is preparing to stand
by" screen comes up and it indeed enters standby, drawing little
enough power so that my UPS' wattmeter drops to zero.

I was behind the rack yesterday and noticed that even though I thought
the computer was still in standby, the fan was running. I looked at
the display on my UPS and it showed that the load was about 90 watts,
just about what the computer draws when it's on but the monitor has
gone into standby (which it was). Moving the mouse or pressing a key
on the keyboard switches the monitor back on, and it's up and
running.

When pressing the crescent moon button on the keyboard, it does indeed
go into Standby and draw unmeasurable (by the UPS) power, but after a
while, maybe half an hour or so, it wakes up with the monitor
remaining in standby, suggesting that everything is on but the video
output.

When going into Standby using the menu off the Windows Start button,
it seems to stay in standby (drawing near zero power) at least
overnight, but can be awakened by moving the mouse or pressing a key
on the keyboard.

So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the keyboard is really
convenient.

[Nick Brown]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:41:54 -0700 (PDT), Mike Rivers
wrote:

When pressing the crescent moon button on the keyboard, it does indeed
go into Standby and draw unmeasurable (by the UPS) power, but after a
while, maybe half an hour or so, it wakes up with the monitor
remaining in standby, suggesting that everything is on but the video
output.

When going into Standby using the menu off the Windows Start button,
it seems to stay in standby (drawing near zero power) at least
overnight, but can be awakened by moving the mouse or pressing a key
on the keyboard.

So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the keyboard is really
convenient.

Mike,

I don't know what's going on with the computer seeming to wake up
again after half an hour, but if putting it on standby via the start
menu does the right thing, maybe the simplest thing is just to get
accustomed to using the keyboard to do the same. On my computer here
pressing: start menu key, then 'u', then 's', will do it. (If your
keyboard doesn't have a start menu key, then ctrl+esc will do the
same.)

-Nick

[Chris Whealy]

Mike Rivers wrote:
One of mine wakes up!


Have you checked the BIOS that the "Network Boot" or "Wake on network
request" settings (or whatever its called on your machine) is not set?

Just a thought...

Chris W

--
The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.
---

[Steve L.[_3_]]

Mike Rivers so you saynews:2713505d-e162-4264-8fb0-
:

I've taken to putting it
into Standby when I close up shop for the day

any reason not to get into the BIOS and just schedule it to
power up before you get there every day?

[Arny Krueger]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message


One of mine wakes up!

As a compromise between waiting a couple of minutes to
boot up and leaving my studio computer on all the time,
I've taken to putting it into Standby when I close up
shop for the day. I figure that will give the disk drive
and power supply a rest, reduce my carbon footprint (and
save a few pennies a month on my electric bill) and still
give me a computer when I want it rather than having to
twiddle my thumbs while it's booting.

The keyboard I have on this computer has three extra
buttons on it, one of which has a crescent moon on it.
Maybe I just don't know what this icon means, but I
guessed that it was to engage the standby mode. In fact,
when I press the button, the "Windows is preparing to
stand by" screen comes up and it indeed enters standby,
drawing little enough power so that my UPS' wattmeter
drops to zero.

Sounds good, so far.

I was behind the rack yesterday and noticed that even
though I thought the computer was still in standby, the
fan was running. I looked at the display on my UPS and it
showed that the load was about 90 watts, just about what
the computer draws when it's on but the monitor has gone
into standby (which it was). Moving the mouse or pressing
a key on the keyboard switches the monitor back on, and
it's up and running.

Presumably with minimal increase in power usage.

When pressing the crescent moon button on the keyboard,
it does indeed go into Standby and draw unmeasurable (by
the UPS) power, but after a while, maybe half an hour or
so, it wakes up with the monitor remaining in standby,
suggesting that everything is on but the video output.

When going into Standby using the menu off the Windows
Start button, it seems to stay in standby (drawing near
zero power) at least overnight, but can be awakened by
moving the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard.

So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the
keyboard is really convenient.

IMO, the most convenient standby mode is the one that kicks in
automatically, after the machine is inactive for like an hour or two. You
can set this via the "Power Options" Icon in the control panel.

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 10:04 am, Chris Whealy wrote:

Have you checked the BIOS that the "Network Boot" or "Wake on network
request" settings (or whatever its called on your machine) is not set?

That's off. I thought it was, but I just checked and it is. Windows
Automatic Updates is off (as is the service for it that has to be on
even if you get updates manually on demand). I thought it might have
been AVG going out and getting a new virus signature update every
night, but, much to the disgruntlement of the program, it's off too,
as is a daily virus scan. So I can't think of anything that's running
a timer. And it doesn't seem to restart at any particular time of the
day, just some time after it's put into standby with the button on the
keyboard.

I have the power options set to turn off the monitor after half an
hour of inactivity, and the hard drive after a couple of hours. I'll
try having the computer go into standby as Arny suggested. Maybe if it
turns itself to standby, it'll stay there.

Perhaps the crescent moon key isn't a standby key at all, but it's
supposed to open the outhouse door for when you're in a hurry. There's
no power in my outhouse, so I can't use that feature anyway.

[Chris Whealy]

Mike Rivers wrote:
Perhaps the crescent moon key isn't a standby key at all, but it's
supposed to open the outhouse door for when you're in a hurry. There's
no power in my outhouse, so I can't use that feature anyway.


Maybe the crescent moon is the "Convert to Islam" key....

:-P

Chris W

--
The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.
---

[Frank Stearns]

Mike Rivers writes:

On Sep 25, 10:04 am, Chris Whealy wrote:

Have you checked the BIOS that the "Network Boot" or "Wake on network
request" settings (or whatever its called on your machine) is not set?

That's off. I thought it was, but I just checked and it is. Windows
Automatic Updates is off (as is the service for it that has to be on
even if you get updates manually on demand). I thought it might have
been AVG going out and getting a new virus signature update every
night, but, much to the disgruntlement of the program, it's off too,
as is a daily virus scan. So I can't think of anything that's running
a timer. And it doesn't seem to restart at any particular time of the
day, just some time after it's put into standby with the button on the
keyboard.

-snips-

Mike, might something be vibrating your mouse just enough so that the machine thinks
someone wants to use it and it comes back to life?

Do you have "sentry cats" (or mice!) walking across the keyboard while no one's
around?

Far as I know most standby modes require a specific button press to bring the
machine back up, but in some configs that "button press" might be a slight mouse
move or "any key" touch.

(The Microsoft "dark humor" response to what do computers do when they're idle: why,
they leak away memory and then freeze up! Things are better these days with XP,
however.)

Let us know what you find out.

Frank Stearns
Mobile Audio

--

[John O[_2_]]

So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the
keyboard is really convenient.

Yes, kind of, see this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance...ower_Interface

Standby uses some power, presubably to keep the RAM memory refreshed and the
CPU in its standby mode. Depends on the specific sleep mode.

Hibernation (S4), OTOH, is a compromise between off and standby. It dumps
memory to the HDD, then shuts down 100%. I've been doing this with laptops
for many years, and a system can stay in Hibernation forever, more or less,
with no power draw at all.

Hibernation take a few seconds to start, and a few more to recover, longer
than standby. It uses a chunk of HDD space equal to the amount of RAM you
have. But it uses *zero* power once you're there.

On some computers, especially laptops, you can configure that crescent
button to do different things...standby, hibernate, off. Check the Power
control panel and one of the tabs, the settings are in there if you have
them with your mobo.

-John O

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 12:05 pm, Frank Stearns
wrote:

Mike, might something be vibrating your mouse just enough so that the machine thinks
someone wants to use it and it comes back to life?

Do you have "sentry cats" (or mice!) walking across the keyboard while no one's
around?

No cats or mice, no earthquakes, and I think it's too big for the
crickets.

Far as I know most standby modes require a specific button press to bring the
machine back up, but in some configs that "button press" might be a slight mouse
move or "any key" touch.

That's the way mine seems to work. It's a very light sleeper.

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 10:35 am, "Steve L." wrote:

any reason not to get into the BIOS and just schedule it to
power up before you get there every day?

I don't "get there" every day, or the same time every day.

[Steve L.[_3_]]

Mike Rivers so you saynews:1b4e9f00-317f-4feb-82ec-
:

On Sep 25, 10:35 am, "Steve L." wrote:

any reason not to get into the BIOS and just schedule it to
power up before you get there every day?

I don't "get there" every day, or the same time every day.


that's a good reason!

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 12:26 pm, "John O"
wrote:
So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the
keyboard is really convenient.

Standby uses some power, presubably to keep the RAM memory refreshed and the
CPU in its standby mode. Depends on the specific sleep mode.

Hibernation (S4), OTOH, is a compromise between off and standby. It dumps
memory to the HDD, then shuts down 100%.

I know about hibernation and that's not what I'm trying to do, just
plain ol' standby. I have my laptops set to hibernate when the battery
gets dangerously low.

On some computers, especially laptops, you can configure that crescent
button to do different things...standby, hibernate, off.

I can do that on this computer (a desktop), and I have it set to go
into standb when pressing the "standby" button.

[John Williamson]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On Sep 25, 10:35 am, "Steve L." wrote:

any reason not to get into the BIOS and just schedule it to
power up before you get there every day?

I don't "get there" every day, or the same time every day.

Might I suggest that instead of telling it to stand by, you tell it to
hibernate instead?

That way, if the power goes off while you're away, everything will still
be there when you get back. The drawbacks are that it takes a bit longer
to wake up, but nowhere near as long as a reboot & that it ignores most
things while it's hibernated, so you need to wake it up with the power
button.

Depending on what keyboard you've got & whether the driver's installed,
you may even be able to program your crescent moon key to hibernate the
computer in one button press.
--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[John O[_2_]]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...
On Sep 25, 12:26 pm, "John O"
wrote:
So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the
keyboard is really convenient.

Standby uses some power, presubably to keep the RAM memory refreshed and
the
CPU in its standby mode. Depends on the specific sleep mode.

Hibernation (S4), OTOH, is a compromise between off and standby. It dumps
memory to the HDD, then shuts down 100%.

I know about hibernation and that's not what I'm trying to do, just
plain ol' standby. I have my laptops set to hibernate when the battery
gets dangerously low.

On some computers, especially laptops, you can configure that crescent
button to do different things...standby, hibernate, off.

I can do that on this computer (a desktop), and I have it set to go
into standb when pressing the "standby" button.

Try to adjust the mouse sensitivity settings? That's probably not a good
answer because it affects everything you do. Is something pulling on the
mouse cable? Just guessing, of course.

-John O

[Geoff]

John Williamson wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:
On Sep 25, 10:35 am, "Steve L." wrote:

any reason not to get into the BIOS and just schedule it to
power up before you get there every day?

I don't "get there" every day, or the same time every day.

Might I suggest that instead of telling it to stand by, you tell it to
hibernate instead?

That way, if the power goes off while you're away, everything will
still be there when you get back. The drawbacks are that it takes a
bit longer to wake up, but nowhere near as long as a reboot & that it
ignores most things while it's hibernated, so you need to wake it up
with the power button.

Depending on what keyboard you've got & whether the driver's
installed, you may even be able to program your crescent moon key to
hibernate the computer in one button press.

Or turn it off, and in the morning press the on switch BEFORE you go get
your coffee - what takes longer the jug or 'puter ?!!

geoff

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 7:23 pm, "geoff" wrote:

Or turn it off, and in the morning press the on switch BEFORE you go get
your coffee - what takes longer the jug or 'puter ?!!

I think I'll just have to take the advice that I give to a lot of
other people and just be less impatient. Today even after switching it
to standby from the Windows menu, I caught it slurping up the juice.
It uses marginally less power in that mode than when in full
operation, but I guess when I'm through for the day I'll go back to
turning it off.

I didn't used to worry about that, and considered that it was better
to leave things that were used frequently on than to turn them off and
back on again, but I'm starting to revise that philosophy now that
some hardware is cheaper and crummier than it used to be. I never had
a disk failure until just a couple of years ago, and I've had two fail
electrically just about the time the warranty was up. I think they've
learned the secret of the car battery life prediction. I figure that
keeping the disk drives off when it's reasonable may extend their life
enough to matter.

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 6:03 pm, "Soundhaspriority" wrote:

Control Panel--Keyboard--Hardware--HID Keyboard Properties--Power
Management--(check box, "Allow this device to bring the computer out of
standby.:")

I assume that's what makes it pay attention to the "sun" button (or
any key) which takes it out of standby.

Interesting. I looked at the nearest computer with XP on it, a laptop
with an external keyboard, and it didn't have that option. Then I
looked at the computer that started this discussion and indeed it had
a Power Management tab with the check box you described. I unchecked
it (yes, it had been checked) and indeed the keyboard now does not
take it out of standby - I have to press the power button on the
computer. I'll try it that way and see if it continues to fully stand
by and let you know what happens.

This is a PS2 keyboard, not USB. Remember that discussion of a while
back, that resulted in my replacing the new computer with only USB
ports with one that had PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors?

Some peripheral cards can wake up a machine, if they can generate "power
management events." All USB 2.0 cards, and some Firewire cards can do this.
So can modem cards, and modern LAN cards.

I do have a Firewire card in the computer, but for what it's worth I
have the Firewire networking disabled. Of course there's a LAN card
(actually built into the motherboard rather than a real card) but I
have the BIOS "LAN wakeup" turned off. There isn't anything plugged
into the USB ports that I'd be willing to unplug just to keep it in
standby though. There's a hub, a hard drive dock (but that's powered
down unless it's in use), and a couple of USB1.1 devices, a Steinberg
dongle key and a MIDI interface.

[Keith]

On Sep 26, 11:15*am, Mike Rivers wrote:
On Sep 25, 6:03 pm, "Soundhaspriority" wrote:

Control Panel--Keyboard--Hardware--HID Keyboard Properties--Power
Management--(check box, "Allow this device to bring the computer out of
standby.:")

I assume that's what makes it pay attention to the "sun" button (or
any key) which takes it out of standby.

Interesting. I looked at the nearest computer with XP on it, a laptop
with an external keyboard, and it didn't have that option. Then I
looked at the computer that started this discussion and indeed it had
a Power Management tab with the check box you described. I unchecked
it (yes, it had been checked) and indeed the keyboard now does not
take it out of standby - I have to press the power button on the
computer. I'll try it that way and see if it continues to fully stand
by and let you know what happens.

This is a PS2 keyboard, not USB. Remember that discussion of a while
back, that resulted in my replacing the new computer with only USB
ports with one that had PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors?

Some peripheral cards can wake up a machine, if they can generate "power
management events." All USB 2.0 cards, and some Firewire cards can do this.
So can modem cards, and modern LAN cards.

I do have a Firewire card in the computer, but for what it's worth I
have the Firewire networking disabled. Of course there's a LAN card
(actually built into the motherboard rather than a real card) but I
have the BIOS "LAN wakeup" turned off. There isn't anything plugged
into the USB ports that I'd be willing to unplug just to keep it in
standby though. There's a hub, a hard drive dock (but that's powered
down unless it's in use), and a couple of USB1.1 devices, a Steinberg
dongle key and a MIDI interface.

I too use standby overnight and make sure the amber crescent is
glowing because I occasionally have the opposite problem and it will
'freeze' (no standby light) with the main blue switch on. I have no
idea why it does this ,there seems to be no pattern to it .Perhaps
there is a 'range' of standby sensitivities with my computer only too
ready to 'freeze' and yours only too ready to 'wake up'. Hibernation
is 'plan-B' but I want to preserve my hard drive.
There must be someone out there who can clarify this.

[RD Jones]

On Sep 25, 1:12 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:

So are there two "standby" modes? The button on the
keyboard is really convenient.
On Sep 25, 12:26 pm, "John O"
wrote:
Standby uses some power, presubably to keep the RAM memory refreshed and the
CPU in its standby mode. Depends on the specific sleep mode.

Hibernation (S4), OTOH, is a compromise between off and standby. It dumps
memory to the HDD, then shuts down 100%.

I know about hibernation and that's not what I'm trying to do, just
plain ol' standby. I have my laptops set to hibernate when the battery
gets dangerously low.

Thanks to the EPA we have a number of implementations of "green"
built into pc's over the last 10 years. There's no absolute standard
though and each motherboard maker does it just a little different.

There may be more than two versions of "standby" depending on
the capabilities and configuation of both the operating system and
the motherboard/BIOS.

Windows power options will only install controls for those devices
and behaviours it can control. As you can imagine, such configuation
will vary widely due to hardware present and motherboard ability.

Some sytems have various levels of control such as "sleep", "standby",
"suspend" (suspend-to-RAM or STR) and finally hibernate.

On some computers, especially laptops, you can configure that crescent
button to do different things...standby, hibernate, off.

I can do that on this computer (a desktop), and I have it set to go
into standb when pressing the "standby" button.

BIOS is King.
Regardless of what Windows tells the system to do it can only send a
command to the motherboard that will be interpretted in the way that
the BIOS has been programmed. For example, a sleep command may
be setup in BIOS to just power the machine down.

Mike, I think in your case it's that something is happening out-of-
order,
or that some unexpected activity on a device occurs after the time out
period. I'd look in both BIOS and the windoze power options to see
what
might be programmed to happen at that interval. Also deselect activity
monitors in BIOS (ie, mouse) and let maybe just the keyboard be the
"resume" device.

Order in which devices are put to sleep that seems to work for me:
blank screen - 15 min
turn off monitor - 20 min
spin down drives - 45 min
system standby - 1 hr

I have both a keyboard power button and standby button, they both
seem to do the same thing which is put the system in standby.


rd

[Mike Rivers]

On Sep 25, 11:27 pm, RD Jones wrote:

BIOS is King.
Regardless of what Windows tells the system to do it can only send a
command to the motherboard that will be interpretted in the way that
the BIOS has been programmed. For example, a sleep command may
be setup in BIOS to just power the machine down.

BIOS also asserts the limits of its kingdom. There are more BIOS
options regarding power control in this Dell 370 than on my Dell
laptop, but there isn't very much available, basically whether the LAN
can wake it up or not. More generic motherboards used by built-it-
yourselfers usually offer more control over everything. Ready built
computers like Dells (which is what I'm trying to beat into
submission) tend to offer less control to the user because there's
less to screw up and it's easier to support.

The keyboard waking it up is, as Bob pointed to, a function of the
Keyboard setup in the Windows Control Panel, and those screens look
different on each computer that I have. It would be nice to simply be
able to understand all of the options (whether they're available or
not) and choose the correct one rather than just guessing and trying.
But nobody I know has that kind of knowledge of PCs.

Mike, I think in your case it's that something is happening out-of-
order,
or that some unexpected activity on a device occurs after the time out
period.

It's possible that even though there isn't anything heavy enough to
press a key, perhaps a power transient is kicking it out of standby.
With the "allow the keyboard to take the computer out of standby" box
unchecked, it stayed in standby for a couple of hours last night, it
was in standby when I got up this morning, and I woke it up (with the
Power button on the computer) and put it back into standby and it's
held for another hour so far today. So whether it's the keyboard or
not that's actually causing the wakeup call, perhaps it's that
function that's doing it through another route.

Order in which devices are put to sleep that seems to work for me:
blank screen - 15 min
turn off monitor - 20 min
spin down drives - 45 min
system standby - 1 hr

I don't have a Blank Screen, but I have used similar settings for Turn
Off Monitor, Turn Off Hard Disks, and System Standby.

I have both a keyboard power button and standby button, they both
seem to do the same thing which is put the system in standby.

My keyboard Power button actually powers the computer down, and it
does a complete boot-up when restarting, just like what you get from
the Start button when you tell it to shut down.

As I often point out, no two computers are alike unless they have the
same setup from the same time right out of the factory. On a home-
built system or one that has been used by anyone who has ever changed
some option, that's the end of "alike."

[Ben Bradley[_2_]]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:04:01 +0200, Chris Whealy
wrote:

Mike Rivers wrote:
One of mine wakes up!


Have you checked the BIOS that the "Network Boot" or "Wake on network
request" settings (or whatever its called on your machine) is not set?

Just a thought...

Another thought, if you have any "scheduled tasks" such as defrag,
its scheduled time may get set as an "alarm" time in the real-time
clock which will power up the computer at the scheduled time.


Chris W