Remote control power button shuts down instead of sleeping

[nikkilocke]

I just upgraded by old Elonex Artisan from Vista (it originally came with XP) to Windows 8.

The upgrade went smoothly (I just had to reinstall some of the old drivers - especially sound and video).

I copied the Media Centre shortcut from the Start Menu into the auto-start folder, so MCE starts up automatically on reboot.

I just have one remaining problem - when I press the Power button on my MCE remote, the computer seems to shut down completely (all the lights go out, it doesn't respond to the power button on the remote to restart it, and it doesn't come on to do recordings). Once it is in this state, pressing the power button on the machine itself starts it up, and it comes back where it left off (i.e. in MCE at the screen I left, not in the Start menu).

I have checked the power button settings in Control Panel, and set both buttons to Sleep. I have also disabled Hybrid sleep - no change.

I can make the computer sleep by going to the MCE shut-down menu and choosing sleep, and that works fine.

I even downloaded something called "Advanced MCE Remote Mapper Tool", and checked the power button settings in that, and it says it is set to sleep.

Any ideas?

[leroys1000]

Check your bios power settings and make sure it is set to at least S3 if not 4 or 5
depending on the age of the computer.
If you have a wake on USB in the bios power settings,enable that as well.
Check device manager in windows for the remote.
Make sure that allow this device to wake the computer is enabled in the device properties.

[nikkilocke]

Not in a position to check the BIOS yet - but, if the bios is set wrong, why does selecting sleep from the media centre shutdown menu work OK.
Have checked the eHome remote in Device Manager, and unchecked "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". The "Allow this device to wake the computer" option is greyed out

[nikkilocke]

OK, have checked the BIOS this morning.
Power settings choices are S1, S3, both. It was set to S3, so I have left it alone.
Wake on USB was already set.

For the avoidance of doubt, the problem does not appear to be waking the computer from Sleep (that works), but the fact that the computer appears to Hibernate (I guess) instead of Sleeping when I press the power button on the remote.

[CyberSimian]

For the avoidance of doubt, the problem does not appear to be waking the computer from Sleep (that works), but the fact that the computer appears to Hibernate (I guess) instead of Sleeping when I press the power button on the remote.

If your HTPC is in fact hibernating, it will still wake up to perform recordings (I use hibernation on my HTPC). The wake-up sequence is not quick: on my HTPC it is about 30 seconds for wake from hibernation, compared to 3 seconds for wake from sleep. How long does yours take?

If your HTPC is not waking up to perform recordings, either it is truly off (in which case you will see the boot-up sequence when you power it on), or there is a problem with the "Scheduled Tasks Manager" (or whatever it is called) not creating the relevant tasks to wake the HTPC for recordings. I have never had this latter problem, so I don't know how to fix it; perhaps others can advise.

Are you sure that you have correctly set the action of the remote-control's "Power" button in the "Advanced Settings" dialogue in the power plan? The button that you need to set is called the "Sleep" button in the power plan, and you need to set it to sleep (obviously), and then save the changes and reboot. You cannot use the remote control to wake a hibernating HTPC, regardless of how you set the "Allow this device to wake the computer" option in the settings for the IR receiver.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[milli260876]

Check control panel>power settings>advanced and turn hybrid sleep or hibernate to off??

[milli260876]

Some motherboards have a jumper to allow 5volts power (or not!) to usb that might be worth a look if you've got your manual...

[nikkilocke]

Thanks for chipping in with all the help, everyone.

1) What is an HTPC? Is that the same as a Media Centre?

2) I have tried setting both the Power button and the Sleep button to Sleep. It did not make any difference.

3) If I use Media Centre/Tasks/Shutdown/Sleep to put the computer to sleep. it sleeps properly, leaves a red light on the front, wakes up to do recordings, and also wakes when I press the remote power button. However trying to make it sleep with the power button does something different. No red light on the front, the power button on the remote does nothing, and it did not make a test recording I set up for the middle of the night when I last tried it.

4) I have turned hybrid sleep off.

5) All this worked fine when it was running Vista Media Centre, it has only started going wrong since I upgraded to Windows 8. I cannot therefore see how it could be a hardware problem.

[leroys1000]

Still might need to check device manager in windows.
The properties for the device should have a selection "allow this device to wake the computer".
May have to look around a little for the proper device as remotes can have multiple listings in device manager.
If not selected,it won't wake the computer.
Also check if your remote has mapping software and how that is set.
I have noticed some discrepencies with older media center remotes and newer versions of windows.
One I had,the green button would run media player instead of media center.
May be the problem you are having.
I actually bought an antec veris elite display with remote.
It wakes the computer from complete shut down as I don't do a lot of recording.
Also has a timer that can turn the computer on and off and much more.
HTPC stands for home theater personal computer.

[nikkilocke]

As I said above, "allow this device to wake the computer" is greyed out (and not checked).
I have looked at everything I can find that could possibly be a remote. eHome remote is the only one that could be it, and has a Power Management tab.

In any case, as far as I can see, the problem is not that the remote won't wake the computer when it is off, but that the remote puts the computer into the wrong state - not sleep, but something else. If I manually sleep it from the menus, the remote can wake it up again fine.

I have no idea how to check if my remote has mapping software - any suggestions?

I can't fit an antec display with remote, as I don;t have any spare space at the front of the machine.

[cncb]

What I have to do for my PCs is turn off hibernate from the command line: powercfg -hibernate off

Reboot and then hopefully it should just go to sleep instead of hibernate.

[3rob3]

What I have to do for my PCs is turn off hibernate from the command line: powercfg -hibernate off

Reboot and then hopefully it should just go to sleep instead of hibernate.

I bet that is it. I have to do that as well.

[nikkilocke]

What I have to do for my PCs is turn off hibernate from the command line: powercfg -hibernate off

Reboot and then hopefully it should just go to sleep instead of hibernate.

You star! That did the trick.

I guess there is a way of doing this from Control Panel, but who cares - it works now.

I guess my Vista must have been set up like that already, but installing Windows 8 reset it.