By experimenting, I've found this to be a general problem in WXP and not related to any application or driver software. I've confirmed this behavior on two PCs, both run XP-SP3 and one is Home Edition and the other Pro.

I want to leave my PC in Standby mode and then have it wake automatically to silently record a TV show at a certain time, from my TV tuner device. This arrangements works absolutely great if I set my PC into Hibernate mode, but I happen to prefer using Standby mode for this, and I've found a real flaw in the process. Perhaps there is a workaround possible, maybe by tweaking the registry somewhere. Any help appreciated.

The problem is that when a PC wakes automatically from Standby mode, unless the program that gets run does some pretty involved things with the display, Windows won't even turn on your display upon waking! That is only a problem in my case because I can't see what's going on (though I doubt there would be a visible notice pop up anyway). The main dilemma is that the PC goes right back to sleep (standby) after 2 or 3 minutes, when it detects no activity occurring. My TV-viewing program, like most such apps, wakens your PC five full minutes before the recording is to begin. The app just sits there silently and invisible for those 5 minutes. By the time the 5 minutes elapse, my PC has gone back to snoozing!

Of course, if I manually jiggle the mouse or hit a key during the few minutes in question, the display comes on and the awakening of the PC is consummate, and all goes as planned. But hey, the whole point was to get this to happen automatically in my absence. Any ideas on how to prevent the PC from slipping back into unconsciousness during the 2 or 3 minutes of no apparent activity?? And no, I haven't set my Power Options Control Panel to standby when idle; and no, I haven't set any parameters in the Scheduled Task itself to cause a return to standby mode.

My TV viewing app is "WatchHDTV", a freebie, and I'm damn sure that it isn't causing the return to standby either, only that it sits silent and invisible, triggering WXP to do this funny behavior. I could readily confirm this by setting a scheduled task for some other app that remains invisible and silent when launched. Off hand I can't think what app I could choose for such an experiment, but I'm still real certain that the outcome will be the same and the conclusion will be that WatchHDTV is not the culprit... WXP is!

Thank you for listening. I eagerly await any ideas.

IMHO, on desktop computer any Windows power saving features should be avoided like a disease.
They rarely work perfectly.

IMHO, on desktop computer any Windows power saving features should be avoided like a disease.
They rarely work perfectly.

I agree for XP and before. I can't speak for Vista because I never migrated to it. But with Windows 7, it has worked perfectly for me since I installed it in October.

Win 7 is still pretty young OS, so we'll have to see.
However Vista is no difference in that department.
Since 7 is based on very same code as Vista, I don't expect any miracles.

Since 7 is based on very same code as Vista, I don't expect any miracles.

Win7 is more closely related to Vista than it is to XP, but actually, there have been many changes in Win7 so no, it is not based on the very same code.

As far as power management in Win7, see Power Management with Windows 7.

Of course, that does not help pastures with his XP problem.

so no, it is not based on the very same code.

Well, same kernel, NT6

Yes. Same kernel and very much a reason many, including myself, have referred to Windows 7 as Vista 2.0. Nevertheless, very same kernel does not mean very same OS. I also note that Win7 was never intended to introduce new features, but to improve and fix those that needed work.

Originally Posted by Digerati

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Of course, that does not help pastures with his XP problem.

Not to fret, as it's pretty minor. I might have to settle for using hibernate instead.

Vista, I know, has that single hybrid sleep function, so no more differentiating standby from hibernate. It works splendid based on my limited usage (at least, in that it sleeps and reawakens extremely fast).

Thanks for those replies!

and reawakens extremely fast

Of course, simply reawakening at all is the key thing. Sadly, some machines did not, forcing a hard power cycle - never a good thing.

It could be that the program has some kind of weird bug in it that causes it to have trouble to resume from standby so why assume that it is the OS?