WMC on Win10: Standby Button, when running a recording in the background

[LordVoodoo]

Hello folks,

At my parents‘ place, I still have a WMC running on Windows 10, which works still great for them as sophisticated TV:

• Remote is a Logitech Harmony Companion

• EPG works EPG Centre except for special characters, but that‘s not a big deal

• TV with a dual setup and CI card work for HDPlus

• The HTPC wakes up for recordings

There is one thing, I did not manage.
When I have a running recording and have no active display stream (a different channel, a DVD or something) and want to shut down the TV, the HTPC turns into standby as well. On Windows 7/8 with native WMC support, the HTPC stayed on, until the record was finished.

Has anybody a hint for me, how to disable standby by button when a tv signal is recorded?

[Space]

WMC is supposed to tell the PC to not go to sleep while it is recording, I'm not sure if that mechanism changed since Win7/Win8, but you can see if it is telling it to not go to sleep by running this in a CMD or powershell window:

powercfg -requests

You can see some sample output and what it means in this post.

If for some reason Win10 does not support this mechanism, then I guess the simplest solution is to disable sleep/standby on the PC, probably through the power settings.

[renojim]

I assume you have the remote set up to send Standby when it sends the TV power off signal? I have the same problem with WMC on Windows 8, but it's generally my own dumb fault. I don't realize it's recording when I press standby and it goes to sleep and I miss the rest of the recording. It would be nice to disable any standby signals only while a recording is active.

[LordVoodoo]

Well, I have to look in the powercfg details, that is a good starting point.
The Harmony tells the HTPC to go in Standby mode, but it ignores background recordings. This worked well on Win7/8, but I had to make sure, that there is no signal running on the second tuner…

[technodevotee]

I have hybrid sleep enabled and when I press sleep, it continues recording.

[renojim]

Hmm... I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I'll have to see what the power button on my remote really does. I think it's the Adesso ARC-1100. I've only ever used Windows 8/8.1 and it has always put the computer into hibernation even if a recording is in progress.

[technodevotee]

I have found MST (MCE Standby Tool) helpful when troubleshooting these kinds of issues.

I normally save the executable in a folder then run it without doing the full installation.

It is pretty old but still useful to see what is going on even on Windows 11.

[CyberSimian]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned enabling away mode in the Windows power plan.

Windows calls the POWER button on the remote control the SLEEP button. You can specify what action this button is to perform in the power plan:

- If defined as HIBERNATE, active recordings are terminated prematurely when the POWER button is pressed.
- If defined as SLEEP, active recordings continue to completion, provided that away mode is enabled.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[technodevotee]

Away Mode is effectively the same as Hybrid Sleep.

It enables a combination of Hibernation and Sleep.

ignore this. it is not the same thing - I was having a senior moment

[renojim]

Thanks guys! You've answered my question which I hope helps LordVoodoo. I don't know if I'll stop using hibernate, experiment with the other modes. or just stop being so stupid. I kind of hate to change things since I've had issues with it waking or sleeping/hibernating in the past.

[Space]

Away Mode is effectively the same as Hybrid Sleep.

It enables a combination of Hibernation and Sleep.

You may be confusing "Away mode" with something else, because it is nothing like those three modes.

Hibernation writes the memory to disk and then shuts the system down.
Sleep shuts most things down except for the CPU and memory.

Both of these states are meant for saving energy while being able to get back to where you were before it entered the state (it retains your session). While in these states, your PC is essentially "shutdown" for all intents and purposes.

The main difference between them is that one uses the computer's main memory (RAM) to keep the state, the other uses the hard drive or SSD. The advantage of sleep is that it is very fast to resume your session, the disadvantage is that if the PC looses power while sleeping, you also loose your session. The advantage of hibernation is that you will not lose you session if the PC loses power, the disadvantage is that it takes longer to resume your session (although with the advent of SSDs this time has been greatly reduced).

Hybrid sleep is both of these things together. If you don't lose power while in this state, you will resume quickly from memory, if you do lose power, then you can still resume your session, it will just take longer since it needs to load from the disk.

So when you are in any of the above three states, you PC is essentially doing nothing. It is not intended that your PC is doing any real work while in these states.

Away mode is very different. It's purpose is not to essentially be in a "shutdown" state while allowing session restore.

It's purpose is to still do things, but non-interactively. This means it still has it's CPU, memory and hard drives working and it is still doing work just as if it was not in "Away mode". What it does is shut down the peripherals (video, audio, USB HID, etc.), essentially any of the things needed to communicate with a human. It does this to conserve some power. You would not be able to record TV shows when in hibernation or sleep mode (or the hybrid variation), but "Away mode" is built just for that purpose.

[LordVoodoo]

I have checked on MST (MCE Standby Tool), I have chosen S3 and Away Mode on Application request.
While having a background recording, „powercfg-requests“ pointed on ehrec.exe as Away entry.

My parents confirmed a fully finished recording, while the HTPC received the PowerOff command via Harmony Hub.

[Space]

Sounds good! My Win7 system was able to use "away mode" effectively without having to use MCE Standby Tool, but I've read about many people in the past having to use this tool to get theirs working properly.

[technodevotee]

@Space, You are quite correct - I was getting the two things confused,

It seems that Away Mode is enabled by default on Windows 10 and 11. Perhaps that is why no-one mentioned it?

On the other hand, I have had to enable hybrid sleep on a couple of PCs because they weren't behaving as I wanted them to.