When does System Standby start?

[yalamo]

Something I've never really been able to determine:

I have my power options on XP set so that the monitor goes off after 10 minutes, and hard disk is turned off and the system goes into standby after 30 minutes.

If I run an application that takes longer than 30 minutes, such as anti virus scan or defrag, I know the monitor will go off after 10 minutes, but is XP smart enough not to shut off the hard disks or go into standby while such application are running and I'm not there to refresh with the keyboard or mouse?

To be on the safe side, I usually temporarily set the power options to "Never" when I run these applications, but maybe I don't need to do this. Anyone know?

 

[linney]

ACPI enables the operating system to manage the power given to each attached device and to turn off a device when not in use. So if the drive is being checked by your scanning, it is in use, and therefor should not go into Standby Mode, unless the scanner stops running for the amount of time required to trigger Standby.


Managing System Power (Windows XP)

http://computinghardware.web.cern.c...13-03-01_managing_system_power_windows_xp.htm

Standby Mode

http://www.theeldergeek.com/HT0_008.htm

 

[yalamo]

Linney, thanks for your reply.

I looked at your link, and I see that it refers to notebook computers. Does it apply to desktop PC's as well?

What bothers me is that I can see that if I start AV scan, or whatever, and leave the PC alone, after 4 minutes it goes into screen saver mode, and after 10 minutes it shuts off the monitor (as per my settings). This is why I have always suspected that it will turn off my disks and go into standby a half hour later.

 

[linney]

Try it, and find out one way or the other, I'm betting that it will not go into Standby. Yes the Monitor may turn off, and the Screensaver may start, probably because there is not a lot of action on the screen, display etc, caused by scanning, usually it is just a line changing in the scanner, this it not enough to convince XP, probably it should be, but things don't always work the way we hoped and Microsoft planned.

That link will apply to your Desktop, assuming you have the various Power Options on your machine.

To be honest, I never use Standby, or Hibernation, the Screensaver doesn't kick in for 60 minutes either. I do turn off the machine overnight or if I am going out. I work from Home, so it might be different for you if you are in an office.

 

[yalamo]

Linney, thanks.

I obviously don't have "hibernate" on my desktop, so I'm not sure the link applies to my PC. I can't know if my machine has gone into standby, since the transition is invisible to me once the monitor has turned off. The only way I could tell was by running a little experiment:

I know that the AV scan takes a little less than an hour, so I set the time to standby to 20 minutes, started the AV scan, and went to read a book. I came back to my PC after an hour and a half, and saw that the AV scan had finished (no viruses) after about 50 minutes. Now I know that XP is smart enough to hold off turning off the hard disk and going into standby until processes running in the background are finished!

 

[linney]

Many Desktops have a Hibernation option to check if you do follow this from Help and Support.

"To automatically put your computer into hibernation
You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings might also prevent you from completing this procedure.

Open Power Options in Control Panel.
Click the Hibernate tab, select the Enable hibernate support check box, and then click Apply.
If the Hibernate tab is unavailable, your computer does not support this feature".


One guide to knowing whether your machine is in Standby is any flashing lights on the box, or any lessening of machine running sounds.