I've been using a program called MCE Standby Tool to automatically wake and enter standby for scheduled programming. It worked great with W7 but when I upgraded to W8 it stopped entering Standby automatically (waking works fine). This went on for months until it just started working properly again. The exact same thing is happening now that I've upgraded to W8.1 Pro/64.
I'm getting no response with MCEST support. All the PC settings should be correct since it was working fine with two different versions. I would greatly appreciate any assistance I can get with this.
System Not Automatically Entering Standby Mode w/W8.1
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Sai Das
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newfiend
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I have heard of others having the same issues with sleep and 8.1. They say you can sleep it manually and it will wake to record etc. but won't go back to sleep afterward.
Have you tried running MCEST in compatibility mode for Windows 7? This may just need to get patched/fixed my MS as it should go to sleep without the use of MCEST anyway. I would Google search and see if others are reporting the issue to MS.. If they are, make sure you chime in and make them aware that this is happening so they can look into it. Sorry I couldn't offer any help but you are not the first person I have heard complain of this with Windows 8/8.1. The other person I know that had this issue just rolled back to Windows 7.. Problem solved.
newfiend~
Have you tried running MCEST in compatibility mode for Windows 7? This may just need to get patched/fixed my MS as it should go to sleep without the use of MCEST anyway. I would Google search and see if others are reporting the issue to MS.. If they are, make sure you chime in and make them aware that this is happening so they can look into it. Sorry I couldn't offer any help but you are not the first person I have heard complain of this with Windows 8/8.1. The other person I know that had this issue just rolled back to Windows 7.. Problem solved.
newfiend~
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4Crawler
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I ran into similar issues with my HTPC on the 8.1 upgrade. I posted on the thread below:
- http://answers.microsoft.com/thread/5e0 ... 644b07f9e6
And ultimately was able to get the system back to a stable state. Several key items I had to do was disable the Logitech wireless mouse/kbd devices from waking the PC. That had worked fine in Win8, but in 8.1, having those devices enabled caused problems. Then I found that WMC was hanging up in EPG updates and that left it in a wakened state. Also, I removed the Norton (Comcast) anti-virus tools and went back to the built-in AV tools in 8.1 as apparently 3rd party AV tools can cause issues. I was getting random crashes in both the Norton AV software as well as in the ethernet driver. Ultimately, I think these issue came back to a subtle memory issue that surfaced after the 8.1 upgrade.
Many years ago, I had upgraded the PC memory from 1GB (2x512MB) to 3GB with 2 new 1GB DIMMs. That was with XP and all was fine for years. Then when I moved to Win8 (converting the old PC to an HTPC), I swapped out the old 512MB DIMMs with 2 new 1GB DIMMs to go to 4GB (actually 3.5GB).
But in the process, I guess I had moved the existing 1GB DIMMs to the first slots then plugged the new DIMMs in the second slots. When I bought the older 1GB DIMMs, I guess I had picked up a faster DIMM than spec'd for the MB. All was fine then as the BIOS set the memory speed to that of the slower first bank of RAM. When I moved the DIMMs around, the faster ones ended up in the first slots and the BIOS upped the BIOS speed. But the newer DIMMs were apparently not up to that speed and ultimately started throwing errors. I ended up confirming this with memtest86 and was able to isolate the errors to the two new DIMMs when plugged in with the old DIMMs.
So I picked up 2 more DIMMs of the faster speed (for a whopping 20 bucks) and now have all the memory speed-matched (same vendor as well) and all once again is doing well. System has been sleeping and waking to record/update and then going back to sleep for many weeks now. I have a few things I turned off while debugging that I need to turn back on (one at a time) and see if any of those services case problems.
But the tips on that MS thread above were to run powercfg with various options and try to reduce the number of issues it reports. Another thing is to create a custom power plan and modify that to set things up rather than editing an existing power plan. And a third thing was to leave all Win8 homegroups (if you use those) and recreate the homegroup on a Win8.1 PC, then rejoin with any other PCs. And post up on that "no sleep" thread as there seems to be a few folks there who are good at interpreting powercfg report data.
Actually in the end, I think my HTPC is much happier now as it used to be idling near 10% CPU load with Win8 and now it is down in the 3-4% range with 8.1 and this is with an old Pentium D CPU. I think WIn8.1 is much more sensitive to "things", like misbehaving device drivers, marginal hardware, etc. that Win8 was. And this system had been running fine on Win8+MC for about 9 months and then after the upgrade to 8.1, with no other changes, it started acting up.
- http://answers.microsoft.com/thread/5e0 ... 644b07f9e6
And ultimately was able to get the system back to a stable state. Several key items I had to do was disable the Logitech wireless mouse/kbd devices from waking the PC. That had worked fine in Win8, but in 8.1, having those devices enabled caused problems. Then I found that WMC was hanging up in EPG updates and that left it in a wakened state. Also, I removed the Norton (Comcast) anti-virus tools and went back to the built-in AV tools in 8.1 as apparently 3rd party AV tools can cause issues. I was getting random crashes in both the Norton AV software as well as in the ethernet driver. Ultimately, I think these issue came back to a subtle memory issue that surfaced after the 8.1 upgrade.
Many years ago, I had upgraded the PC memory from 1GB (2x512MB) to 3GB with 2 new 1GB DIMMs. That was with XP and all was fine for years. Then when I moved to Win8 (converting the old PC to an HTPC), I swapped out the old 512MB DIMMs with 2 new 1GB DIMMs to go to 4GB (actually 3.5GB).
But in the process, I guess I had moved the existing 1GB DIMMs to the first slots then plugged the new DIMMs in the second slots. When I bought the older 1GB DIMMs, I guess I had picked up a faster DIMM than spec'd for the MB. All was fine then as the BIOS set the memory speed to that of the slower first bank of RAM. When I moved the DIMMs around, the faster ones ended up in the first slots and the BIOS upped the BIOS speed. But the newer DIMMs were apparently not up to that speed and ultimately started throwing errors. I ended up confirming this with memtest86 and was able to isolate the errors to the two new DIMMs when plugged in with the old DIMMs.
So I picked up 2 more DIMMs of the faster speed (for a whopping 20 bucks) and now have all the memory speed-matched (same vendor as well) and all once again is doing well. System has been sleeping and waking to record/update and then going back to sleep for many weeks now. I have a few things I turned off while debugging that I need to turn back on (one at a time) and see if any of those services case problems.
But the tips on that MS thread above were to run powercfg with various options and try to reduce the number of issues it reports. Another thing is to create a custom power plan and modify that to set things up rather than editing an existing power plan. And a third thing was to leave all Win8 homegroups (if you use those) and recreate the homegroup on a Win8.1 PC, then rejoin with any other PCs. And post up on that "no sleep" thread as there seems to be a few folks there who are good at interpreting powercfg report data.
Actually in the end, I think my HTPC is much happier now as it used to be idling near 10% CPU load with Win8 and now it is down in the 3-4% range with 8.1 and this is with an old Pentium D CPU. I think WIn8.1 is much more sensitive to "things", like misbehaving device drivers, marginal hardware, etc. that Win8 was. And this system had been running fine on Win8+MC for about 9 months and then after the upgrade to 8.1, with no other changes, it started acting up.
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seajunk
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I had the same problem. It turned out that the upgrade to 8.1 created a home group and since i was already sharing folders at 8.0 there was some interaction that wouldn't let the pc sleep. As I didn't need the homegroup, simply removing it solved the problem.