Automatic shutdown fails for long timeouts (?)

[Wil Stark]

On my XP Pro system (ASUS MB, XP2800/1GB/200GB RAID0, SP2 + latest
hotfixes), I use fast user switching, and have 3 accounts - Administrator,
and two other non-admin accounts.

I set up the system under all 3 accounts to power down monitors after 20min,
power down HDDs after 1hr, and hibernate after 3 hours. The physical power
button is set to hibernate the box.

Pressing the physical power button always works - no problem with
hibernation. Also, setting the automatic hibernate to 1 minute works as
well. After 1 minute of inactivity, the box hibernates.

The problem is that the box will never hibernate on its own after 3 hours
when set to the 3 hour setting. There's something wrong with the 3hr
timeout, almost like something is generating key presses at some interval
longer than 1 minute, but shorter than 3 hours.

Any suggestions out there?

- Wil

 

[Guest]

you're problem my have to do with your second item, the hard drive spinning
down after an hour. once the hard drive is spun down, your computer is off.
there is still minimal power going to your CPU and other devices, but not
much. once your hard drive is shut down windows can no longer monitor what
is happening to your system, nor can it control anything. therefor it would
not be able to know when to go into hibernation. To do so would require the
hard drive to activate so that it could tell the rest of the system to go
into hibernation, thus violating the previouse comand that it should be off.
If i were you i would get rid of the comand for the hard drive to shut down
and find a happy medium with the hibernation (maybe 2 hours).

 

[Guest]

Unfortunately, even when the system is set up for, say, hibernate after 2
hours, turn off monitor after 20 minutes (and never turn the hard disks
off), the problem persists.

If your suggestion about the HDD power down were right, then this would
certainly be a bug in the OS.

- Wil