Help get my HTPC to sleep

May 30, 2008 3:57 PM

My home theater PC wakes up by itself

I have HP home theater PC (z550 series) running Windows XP Media Center Edition which was running fine for a year or so. Recently it started to wake up by itself (after I put it to "stand by") and I can't figure out why. All recent patches are installed. Verified the BIOS and 'wake up on LAN activity' is disabled. What else could it be?

posted by bargainhunter to technology (8 comments total)

A small clarification. The thing will wake randomly often after a few hours in "stand by". Sometimes during the night.
posted by bargainhunter at 4:03 PM on May 30

Are you running gmail notifier? Back in the early days of the gmail notifier, it would sometimes wake my computer up from sleep when I got an email. This hasn't happened to me in years, though.
posted by phunniemee at 4:24 PM on May 30

Sounds like probably you have process running that can wake up the computer, maybe to phone home periodically or to download updates or something. Take a look at your task manager as well as your start up programs (type msconfig in the run bar) to see if anything fits the bill.
posted by tracert at 4:26 PM on May 30

If you have an optical mouse connected and 'wake on mouse' turned on, this may be the cause of what you're experiencing. You can change this option in the control panel. Optical mice sometimes go funny and jitter even when they are not moving.
posted by oliverst at 5:52 PM on May 30

^ agree with oliverst, but check what time your virus or spyware software is scheduled for just in case.
posted by jabberjaw at 6:39 PM on May 30

Is this any use?
posted by flabdablet at 8:44 PM on May 30

Does it have an IR port, or a bluetooth mouse/keyboard? I've seen reports of xbox remotes accidentally waking laptops via the IR port, and another bluetooth device set to discovery mode (cellphone) might wake it as well.
posted by bizwank at 11:32 PM on May 30

Thanks for the tips. I went to the Windows XP Control Panel and unchecked the "Allow this device to wake the computer" option for the network card, keyboard, and mouse. I do have an IR keyboard. Let's see if this helps.

I have another problem with the HTPC, also started to happen recently. It refuses to go stand by right away. I have to wait from several seconds to a minute before it does go stand by. I wonder if these problems are somehow related
posted by bargainhunter at 1:22 PM on May 31