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View Full Version : Windows - so does anyone actually use Power Management? (to save electricity & $)

Szos
10-17-2006, 09:32 PM
I am just curious if anyone actually uses the power saving features of Windows, cuz I figured I would turn mine on just last night so I could same some energy and money.

I had always set the monitors to turn off after a certain time, but figured I would do the same to the HDs. Bad idea - just got home from work, and lo-and-behold the computer won't wake up. :rolleyes:

I tried moving the mouse for a few minutes, hit the keyboard a bunch of times. Nothing. So whatever I was working on last night, I lost, since I had to do a hard reboot.

I believe this is a fairly common issue... which leads me to ask:
Does anyone use Power Management?
DrFx
10-17-2006, 09:43 PM
I actually turn my computer off when I'm not using it, unless I'm rendering an animation or something, in which case it'll be still crunching floats in the morning...
I loathe screen savers and "automatic" anythings, so I always switch those off! Must have had a bad experience in a distant past I can't remember anymore....
bitBrain
10-17-2006, 09:51 PM
Power Management is Evil. Only applies to Microsoft products. No, but seriously, everything here is turned off except the screen which goes hard off after 15 mins. Because that can't affect anything, and because it uses a lot of power. It's the first thing I do when I have to wokr at a new PC.
Mibus
10-18-2006, 12:06 AM
I've set up my home XP box so that tapping the power button on the case turns on 'hibernate'. (aka suspend-to-disk). It's been pretty reliable so far.

My desktop PC at work I do nothing with (but turn the monitors off overnight); my laptop has a lower-CPU mode (automatically engaged based on needs), spins down the HDD, and automatically drops the backlight. And sleeps when I close it (suspend-to-RAM).
Szos
10-18-2006, 01:13 AM
MIBUS - you say you spin the HDs down... but the PC wakes up again without having to reboot it?!?

I find it amazing that my PC wouldn't wake up before.
lots
10-18-2006, 03:18 AM
Windows has two levels of sleep. Suspend, which spins the hard drives down, and puts the CPU into a deep sleep state. This still draws power, but at a highly reduced rate. When the computer is woken up again, the CPU is brought back to a higher power level and the hard drive is spun back up.

The second level is hibernation. Basically Windows creates a file on the hard drive and stores all the information in RAM onto the file, making an "image" of the state the OS was in before hibernation was started. Once this image is on the hard drive, Windows sets its elf to boot from this image the next time the computer starts. Windows then shuts the machine down entirely. This mode of sleep does not use any power, and you can leave your system in this state for as long as you like. When you start it up again, it will load back to where you were before.
Mibus
10-18-2006, 04:39 AM
MIBUS - you say you spin the HDs down... but the PC wakes up again without having to reboot it?!?

That's on my laptop. It's also not running Windows (dual-boot Linux & OSX).
Szos
10-19-2006, 01:42 PM
Windows has two levels of sleep. Suspend, which spins the hard drives down, and puts the CPU into a deep sleep state. This still draws power, but at a highly reduced rate. When the computer is woken up again, the CPU is brought back to a higher power level and the hard drive is spun back up.

Yea, that seems to be the problem however. I'll have to try finding out why my PC doesn't seem to want to wake up... maybe I have a narcoleptic computer. :shrug:
newman
10-20-2006, 07:00 AM
Most of the time, I keep my system in 'render ready mode' - meaning, no screensavers, no monitor and hdd auto power-off.. when I leave it for extended periods of time, I just switch of the monitor, the rest is probably rendering anyway at times like that.
imashination
10-20-2006, 01:30 PM
Generally you'll find windows' deep sleep mode isnt really reliable on most machines, it has always been something which only causes trouble for me. Either machines that wont wake up via usb mouse/keyboard, or when they return to life, all external usb devices are lost, it just never seems worth the pain of trying to use it. The full hibernation is most useful as its far more reliable and uses less power.
lots
10-20-2006, 01:38 PM
Yeah, ocasionally my laptop wont wake up from suspend mode, but Hibernation is quite reliable. I drop the laptop to hibernation, and leave it like that for a few days some times, and when i come back and turn it on, everything's where I left it :)
Szos
10-22-2006, 03:01 PM
I'll give the Hibernate mode a try. Seems so wasteful to have the PC running all the time (even if the monitors do power off), so if regular sleep doesn't work, I hope Hibernate works on this machine.
singularity2006
10-22-2006, 07:17 PM
I get those weird problems with hibernate/suspend all the time so I stopped using them. I simply have my timers as follows:

15min - turn off monitor
20min - spin down drives
30min - auto shut down.

I normally am using the computer if it's on and if i go away for more than a couple hours, I just shut it down completely. Or if I'm in the middle of hwk or some project, the above timers are just fine as I never move away from the machine for more than 30min, so the system stays mostly active.
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