XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

jsmooth · 2009-03-01 00:49

I do not think this is caused by shutter

Problem:

After about 120 seconds of no keyboard\mouse input and ~<20% CPU computer goes to standby. If computer is busy (>20%) this does NOT happen.

Info:
XP with Power management set to "Minimum power management" and standby set to Never

Shutter is set to go to sleep after 600 seconds of <8% CPU

Only connection to computer is via RDP.

BIOS is NOT set to sleep computer on idle.

Solution:

This was driving me nuts for the longest time. Didn't matter whether shutter was running or not. I switched the XP power management scheme to "always on" and the idle standby problem went away. However now Shutter would not go to "sleep" (ie sleep action would kick off but computer was still on).

I fixed this by having shutter run "psshutdown -cd". PSShutdown is a sysinternals command line app.

"-cd" (allow abort, go to standby mode)

den4b · 2009-03-01 04:22

I have included "Force critical" switches to Sleep and Hibernate actions in latest dev version of Shutter. This switch might fix your problem. Try it, and tell us how it goes: ShutterBeta.zip

P.S. 99% that Shutter and PsShutdown would be calling exactly same API functions to initiate Sleep mode.

jsmooth · 2009-03-02 22:37

I'll give it a whirl. One of the nice features of psshutdown is the timed 'cancel' box so if it shutsdown while I'm there I can stop it. Recently I was on an all day WebEx session and I was not generating much cpu and I had to disable shutter. With the psshutdown call now I can just click cancel before it goes to standby

-Joe

jsmooth · 2009-03-21 02:08

The Shutter beta worked fine but I like having the 30 second cancel options that psshutdown gives me.

Meanwhile my premature standby problems was not fixed by changing power modes. Even with Standby 'Off' and Power Mode 'Always On' set in the Power Management control panel, Windows will still shutdown after about 90 seconds of no activity and low cpu. (This is regardless of network activity)

There is NO bios setting to tweak for the affected PC (MSIWind NetTop).

I have found a working solution to prevent the premature standby caused by no activity but still keeps the Shutter standby action working.

Caffeine - http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/index.html
Stims - http://www.acapsoft.com/det.php?prog=Stims

Both simulate pressing the shift key every 60 seconds. This is enough to keep the computer awake until Shutter gets the chance to shut it down. It would be nice to have this functionality incorporated into shutter if possible.

I'm not sure what is causing the premature shutdown and it is a difficult topic for internet research but I have experienced it on multiple computers & laptops. In the case of the MSIWind box it happened about 90% of the time. This box is accessed exclusively via RDP so perhaps Windows reads inactivity\low cpu regardless of power management. I'll keep working on it but in the meantime the Caffeine\Shutter\PSshutdown combo does exactly what I need.

Thanks
-Joe

jsmooth · 2009-04-17 15:18

Update: I always knew that using Caffeine \ Stims was a band aid workaround but I wasn't able to find the source of the problem.

Now, I believe I have.

Problem: Windows entering standby ~120 seconds after no activity regardless of Shutter state (enabled, disabled, closed, etc.)

Cause: The PC in questions does not have a keyboard\monitor. Only access is via RDP (remote desktop). The default power profile applied to the pc on bootup was set to enter standby after 2 minutes.

RDP logon does NOT override this setting. Only local logon will override.

Solution:

in HKEY_Users\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\PowerCFG
set CurrentPowerPolicy to 4 (minimal power management for me)

verified that minimal power management does NOT have standby set.

Windows, Shutter, etc is now working as expected 100% of the time.

No longer using Stim or Caffeine.

-Joe

den4b · 2009-04-17 20:41

Thanks for letting us know what caused this problem! It might be useful to some users.

den4b Forum

#1 2009-03-01 00:49

XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

#2 2009-03-01 04:22

Re: XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

#3 2009-03-02 22:37

Re: XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

#4 2009-03-21 02:08

Re: XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

#5 2009-04-17 15:18

Re: XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

#6 2009-04-17 20:41

Re: XP going to standby when idle BEFORE it should

Board footer