System Standby >15 Minutes

[Ian B]

I have got a new PC that is all Windows 7 and stuff, so decided to convert
the old one (XP SP2) into a sort of poor man's file server. It's quite old;
well, very old, I built it in 2002, but it's an Abit motherboard so it's
still going strong. Disks are now two SATA drives running off a Highpoint
RocketRaid card. And so on.

The problem is, I can wake it up no problem. But if I set the automatic
standby ("sleep") to 15 minutes or more, it won't go to sleep. It will,
however, if I set it to 10 minutes or less. Something must be keeping it
awake, but I don't know what. There is nothing running in Task Scheduler,
and there is very little software installed because of its "server" status,
just a clean install of XP, and IE/OE (this is the other reason for keeping
XP, so I can continue using Outlook Express on it, running in a Remote
Desktop from the new machine, which is how indeed I am typing this).

Is XP likely to be starting some "housekeeping" after 10 minutes that is
preventing the automatic standby? Any ideas? The reason btw I mentioned the
SATA drives is that when it's idle, I notice the hard drive light is
flickering on, a brief flicker every second or so, which is strange as
there's nothing on the IDE ports now except a CD drive; no hard drives at
all. Dunno whether this is relevant. When I'm expecting it to go to sleep, I
make sure no apps (e.g. OE) are running, there are no windows open to
network shares, etc.

Anyway, anyone got any ideas about what is causing the insomnia?


Ian

 

[VanguardLH]

I have got a new PC that is all Windows 7 and stuff, so decided to convert
the old one (XP SP2) into a sort of poor man's file server. It's quite old;
well, very old, I built it in 2002, but it's an Abit motherboard so it's
still going strong. Disks are now two SATA drives running off a Highpoint
RocketRaid card. And so on.

The problem is, I can wake it up no problem. But if I set the automatic
standby ("sleep") to 15 minutes or more, it won't go to sleep. It will,
however, if I set it to 10 minutes or less. Something must be keeping it
awake, but I don't know what. There is nothing running in Task Scheduler,
and there is very little software installed because of its "server" status,
just a clean install of XP, and IE/OE (this is the other reason for keeping
XP, so I can continue using Outlook Express on it, running in a Remote
Desktop from the new machine, which is how indeed I am typing this).

Is XP likely to be starting some "housekeeping" after 10 minutes that is
preventing the automatic standby? Any ideas? The reason btw I mentioned the
SATA drives is that when it's idle, I notice the hard drive light is
flickering on, a brief flicker every second or so, which is strange as
there's nothing on the IDE ports now except a CD drive; no hard drives at
all. Dunno whether this is relevant. When I'm expecting it to go to sleep, I
make sure no apps (e.g. OE) are running, there are no windows open to
network shares, etc.

Anyway, anyone got any ideas about what is causing the insomnia?

Ian

Since you have the XP host connected to a network and since you have
other hosts that may trying to connect to it (even if for that uPnP crap
if you leave it enabled), maybe the problem is you have Wake-on-LAN
events enabled in the BIOS. Then go into Device Manager in Windows to
look at the NIC to see if it has any wakeup events enabled.

 

[Ian B]

Since you have the XP host connected to a network and since you have
other hosts that may trying to connect to it (even if for that uPnP
crap if you leave it enabled), maybe the problem is you have
Wake-on-LAN events enabled in the BIOS. Then go into Device Manager
in Windows to look at the NIC to see if it has any wakeup events
enabled.

Thanks for the reply Vanguard. It's not actually a network thing; not only
am I an Old Skool static IP kinda guy- the DHCP server is disabled on my
router and everything- but I actually want the machine to Wake On LAN. The
problem was it wouldn't go to sleep.

It currently seems the culprit was that annoying Java Virtual Machine thing
that nobody wants had insinuated itself onto the system and installed an
automatic updater starter thing lurking in the system tray. I've disabled
that and it now seems to be sleeping okay.


Ian

 

[VanguardLH]

Thanks for the reply Vanguard. It's not actually a network thing; not only
am I an Old Skool static IP kinda guy- the DHCP server is disabled on my
router and everything- but I actually want the machine to Wake On LAN. The
problem was it wouldn't go to sleep.

It currently seems the culprit was that annoying Java Virtual Machine thing
that nobody wants had insinuated itself onto the system and installed an
automatic updater starter thing lurking in the system tray. I've disabled
that and it now seems to be sleeping okay.

Ian

The java updater will still run as a startup item (although it will then
see that you configured it not to do update checks). If you configure
their updater not to automatically check for updates then there's no
point in loading their update checker on Windows startup. Go into
msconfig.exe and disable the jusched.exe from loading on Windows
startup.

You found one program that you installed that has an auto-update
checker. It's likely you installed lots of other software that also
does an auto-update check. Some will do the check when they are ran.
Some load a checker on startup.

 

[Ian B]

The java updater will still run as a startup item (although it will
then see that you configured it not to do update checks). If you
configure their updater not to automatically check for updates then
there's no point in loading their update checker on Windows startup.
Go into msconfig.exe and disable the jusched.exe from loading on
Windows startup.

That's how I disabled it.

You found one program that you installed that has an auto-update
checker. It's likely you installed lots of other software that also
does an auto-update check. Some will do the check when they are ran.
Some load a checker on startup.

There's not much software on the machine, because it's mainly just a file
server, so hopefully I won't get too many more problems like that.


Ian