Power Management Settings.

[squeakmail]

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks (thought you all deserved a rest)...but now have another question for you gurus.

I've discovered (on two different machines) that if I set power management timings to force my PC into a coma after 15 minutes (or so) of non-use....the hard drives and monitor go to sleep after 15 minutes - hey, what else could you expect?

To wake the slumbering heap of chips all I do is move the attached rodent and the machine springs to life again...until another 15 dormant minutes go by.

This holds true until I ask the start/shut down/shut down route to actually reduce my electricity bill.....then, after turning it on again - the machines seem to have lost the thread of the sleeping idea...and only go as far as screen save (then I have to watch hundreds of flying stars in the night sky).

This normal? or am I missing something (again, duh!!).

Oh, BTW, I've pressed 'Apply' and all the obvious stuff.

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Animals...it's their World too!!

[Mice]

Squeak,
Need more info. After sleep process, then reawaken, do you go straight into shutdown?
Is the problem occuring after a normal shutdown/restart?
Are any of the settings for Power Management changed from your selection after you have slept then reawakened?
Why do you have a screen saver selected at all? If you want to save power (money) have the monitor go into sleep mode by all means, however, there should then be no requirement for a screen saver to be selected.
Without further info, I suspect the activity of the screensaver may be interfering with the sleep process.

Just a further thought! What settings for power save are set in your BIOS? There should be nothing set up here, let Win98 (I assume this is what you use) control this. This can also cause strange things to occur!

Cheers

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When all else fails, read the manual!

[spannersatcx]

Simple answer - don't use power saving modes - why - they cause more problems than they are worth.

[Kagamuga]

Power saving mode under all versions of Win 98 including SE are ropey, most manufacturers seem to have their own versions as a download, Toshiba certainly do.
Disable all power saving modes to avoid problems.

[Mice]

Gentlemen,
I support as number of machines, all with Win98 and above. They run from a Cyrix200, AMD200, Celeron, PentiumII-500, etc etc. The motherboards are of various brands. Not one of these machines has a problem with power saving.
Granted, on rare occasions there is a hardware conflict, however, most problems occur due to some garbage downloaded that is incompatible in the API calls, or TSR corruption. Most are fixed when the HDD is re-formatted, and a clean installation of the operating software is reloaded. This gives a nice clean registry.
As you are all probably aware anyway, Win95/98 generally needs a complete fresh re-load every 12 months or so, depending on what you use the machine for (sometimes sooner). Remember that anything that goes into the registry, stays there. It is only disabled on uninstallation. A clean install gets rid of any conflicitng rubbish in the registry.

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When all else fails, read the manual!

[Slasher]

I bloody hate W98 power management but managed to figure it out:

* Windows API is the primary power controler when in Windows mode
* BIOS Power Management is for when your in DOS mode

I wouldnt recommend disabling the PM altogether. If you want to extend the life of your HDD (by not having to boot up every time you use the computer) set to suspend to RAM ("Sys Standby" + "Turn Off Monitor") mode but NEVER suspend to Disk ("Turn Off HD"). STD creates the worst bloody problems.

I havent looked at "Hibernate" and dont want to either. Sounds like another thing that can screw up your day.

PS Yeh cancel any screensavers you have. Thats a worm in the can you can kill right now.

[Tallbloke]

I swear to god I posted here already, here goes.
Mice is right about re-installing windows, but it is a hell of a job, you have to install all apps again afterwards to be absolutly sure.
Slasher, the BIOS settings can, (depending on machine) override windows settings when the timeouts are set to lower values than the ones in Win power management. I have a Dell with Phoenix BIOS and it will suspend to disk before it turns the display off, if you want.
For anyone else who has a Dell notebook, if you set BIOS power management to disable, the fan may run constantly. The solution according to Dell is to set very long timeouts instead.
I thought one day there would be a brave new world where we would be able to control power from the OS without mincing with BIOS stuff? I thought that world was called Windows 98? Foolish boy.
And finally a question. I used to have suspend on my Start Menu as well as Shut Down, but now I don't. I have probably swithched it off in one of my tinkering sessions, but now I can't find the switch. Any thoughts gratefully accepted.