Dick I doubt they would be intentionally disconnecting Gen drives on descent.....not sure what the 744 bus logic is, but maybe they were led to cycling the bus tie breakers in an attempt to reset the logic - in an attempt to regain instrumentation, as opposed to intentionally remove or fiddle with it.
As for standby power, the switching should be fully automatic - no need to manually select it, unless another checklist has told you to select "BAT" as opposed to AUTO. (I assume the selector is similar to 767)
There has to be a case to install ISFDs here - across all fleets. Independant battery powered ISFD which last a couple of hours, providing vastly easier to interpret information, and allowing Capt /F/o to fly without parallex error.
(or is it IFSD....)