Standby Mode

[Tech Question]

We are planning to deploy a new power management schema for Windows XP
Professional computers but we are investigating a couple of scenarios before
we test Standby Mode in our Testing Lab.

1. What happen when the CPU is active during the computer standby time out?,
The computer goes to standby mode immediately or it wait for the application
job to finish before it goes to standby mode.

2. The same question as indicated above, but in this case for Hard Drive for
example during defragmentation process?


3. What are conditions to declare a computer inactive before it goes to
Standby mode?

Thanks,
Horacio

 

[Tim Meddick]

When the standby timeout vale is exceeded the Operating System tries to
terminate every running process in order to shutdown the computer. It sends
the TERMINATE signal to all running process including any the CPU is
currently engaged in. Some process have priority over this termination
signal but this priority can be overridden with the registry value:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"

....this value (being set to 1 that is "on") forces all applications to
terminate without any user intervention.

The hard drive activity is subservient to the active processes governing
them, and so are subject to the same rules. The write-cache IS however
given time to finish writing it's contents to disk when powering off by any
legitimate Windows means.

And lastly, console input (usually meaning the keyboard) is the condition
that determines inactivity for computer standby timeout to begin it's count.

==



Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London.