Media PC weird power plan issue

[Wadzinsky]

I have a Windows 7 PC set up as a media and file storage server in my house.  I have it set up to hibernate after 90min of inactivity. Sharing media negates the idle (intentionally).  All devices that use this server send WOL packets to it if needed to make it available when needed.  It all functions exactly the way I want it to with one very annoying exception.  Once a day, usually the first time the computer is woken and resumes from hibernation, it immediately shuts itself down completely.  Another WOL packet has to be sent and then it functions as normal.  If it hibernates again after inactivity, a single WOL does the trick.  Just once a day, it shuts down after resuming.

 

Any ideas?

 

It would be nice if the power plan included an option to shutdown the PC after inactivity or if I could redirect the hibernate function to shut the computer down instead.  I wasn't able to find any ways of doing this.

[IgorM]

21 minutes ago, Wadzinsky said:

All devices that use this server send WOL packets to it if needed to make it available when needed

how did you set up that? I'm planning on doing the same with a system.

 

22 minutes ago, Wadzinsky said:

I could redirect the hibernate function to shut the computer down instead

Hibernate is the same thing as shutting the PC down. The only difference is that it writes all the content of RAM to your HDD or SSD before shutting down. If your system has a SSD doing that would add more writes to it and reduce it's life on a very long term

[valleykid]

I'm not sure I know exactly the cause to the problem, though I do have some ideas.  I'd first ask (and the answer is probably yes), have you logged into the machine at the terminal, done a complete shutdown and reboot, then checked your windows updates etc, to ensure nothing is pending?  I know I've seen odd behaviour around situations where an important update is pending, and a hibernate might interrupt the process, after sleeping for a while and waking up, it might try again... for that matter an update could be failing and retrying, forcing the update again, with a mandatory reboot.  Who knows.. (but you should be able to see this in the update history if that is happening) =)

What I was going to offer, was some "probably unwelcome" solicitation to a different idea.  Depending on whether this is used daily, or just occasionally, what about setting up a couple utility batch files on the local machines, which could issue remote commands to force a shutdown, and force a wake-up.  The idea being that you could allow it to do it's power cycle at a more convenient time.  You could probably schedule these things on your local machine as well, if yours is always on, the windows scheduler might work well, or if you turn it on each morning, maybe just adding it to the list of startup/login tasks.

 

The batch file might consist of something like... "shutdown -s -m \\machine -t 0" (At the end of the day, or before you head off for the night, then send your wake on lan when you need it, and its a fresh boot)  Or if you wanted a reboot, change -s to -r (but it sounds like rebooting is the problem)

 

Just a few thoughts to toss on the pile!

[Wadzinsky]

2 minutes ago, IgorM said:

Hibernate is the same thing as shutting the PC down. The only difference is that it writes all the content of RAM to your HDD or SSD before shutting down. 

Unfortunately, they aren't the same.  Hibernate and sleep functions are similar in that they both save the state of the computer allowing it to resume where it left off.  Shutting down completely clears the RAM with no option to resume where you left off

[Wadzinsky]

6 minutes ago, IgorM said:

how did you set up that? I'm planning on doing the same with a system.

 

I have an app on my phone called Wake On Lan.  I can wake the server with my phone, and I have 2 Firesticks running Kodi.  In Kodi, I have a script setup to send a WOL packet on start.  On my computers, I have a WOL app from the windows store that also will wake the server

[IgorM]

5 minutes ago, Wadzinsky said:

Shutting down completely clears the RAM with no option to resume where you left off

Sure. Is that a problem to you? If you want to save power I think it's still a great options. Resuming it from where it stopped shoul be fine considering that most servers stay on 24/7

[Wadzinsky]

7 minutes ago, valleykid said:

I'm not sure I know exactly the cause to the problem, though I do have some ideas.  I'd first ask (and the answer is probably yes), have you logged into the machine at the terminal, done a complete shutdown and reboot, then checked your windows updates etc, to ensure nothing is pending?  I know I've seen odd behaviour around situations where an important update is pending, and a hibernate might interrupt the process, after sleeping for a while and waking up, it might try again... for that matter an update could be failing and retrying, forcing the update again, with a mandatory reboot.  Who knows.. (but you should be able to see this in the update history if that is happening)
 of startup/login tasks.

 

I have logged into it directly.  There are no updates, I turned them off years ago after one update prevented it powering down at all, hanging at the shutdown screen.

 

I have tried setting a task in the scheduler on the local machine to shutdown after idle, but not only would it not shutdown, but streaming media didn't reset the idle timer so if it did end up working, it would shutdown in the middle of use

[Wadzinsky]

3 minutes ago, IgorM said:

Sure. Is that a problem to you? If you want to save power I think it's still a great options. Resuming it from where it stopped shoul be fine considering that most servers stay on 24/7

shutting down isn't a problem at all, infact, I prefer it.  However, the problem I have is configuring it to actually shutdown after inactivity thru the power plan.  The only options are hibernate and sleep.   But with hibernate being my only option to power down, once a day I have to deal with having to start the computer twice instead of just once.  

 

It's rather frustrating.

[valleykid]

1 minute ago, Wadzinsky said:

I have logged into it directly.  There are no updates, I turned them off years ago after one update prevented it powering down at all, hanging at the shutdown screen.

 

I have tried setting a task in the scheduler on the local machine to shutdown after idle, but not only would it not shutdown, but streaming media didn't reset the idle timer so if it did end up working, it would shutdown in the middle of use

Ok, well, here is how I would immediately approach the situation, and the disclaimer is I'm a programmer, not savvy with these media apps etc specifically.   The general way I would approach this is to, immediately after the reboot happened, is go to "Event Viewer", this can be found under Administrative Tools, which is in the Control Panel.

Under Windows Logs (I believe in Windows 7), there are two logs I would probably be concerned with.  Once is System, the Other is Applications.  When you open the logs, you can filter to Warnings, Errors, Critical or something like that, there are 3 negative ones, and then you can sort by Descending Date/Time.  There could be some clues there, and that might help narrow the problem down to a hardware or a software issue.

Outside that, I mean you're saying its happening normally once per day, its probably not hardware, but I would consider a light burn-in test if the machine isn't used a whole heck of a lot directly, it might help point out something faulty, physically...

[Wadzinsky]

3 minutes ago, valleykid said:

Ok, well, here is how I would immediately approach the situation, and the disclaimer is I'm a programmer, not savvy with these media apps etc specifically.   The general way I would approach this is to, immediately after the reboot happened, is go to "Event Viewer", this can be found under Administrative Tools, which is in the Control Panel.
 

I've done the event viewer thing a few months back.  It got me nowhere.  the errors I found suggested disabling auto HD power down in power plan or updating BIOS, and video drivers.  No avail on either.  

 

I mean, I can live with the problem.  It's really only a minor inconvenience having to wait an additional minute for it to become ready.   But being as OCD as I am,  I want to to work perfectly  

 

Also, the same install of windows 7 has gone thru 3 completely different systems, all with this same problem. (about 8 years) , I'm ruling out failed hardware on that fact alone.  I also don't want to reinstall cuz it was such a grueling and hair pulling task just to get it where it is now and I forgot have the registry keys I had to enter to do it

 

[valleykid]

I hear what you're saying, it kind of falls in line with "never buy a mechanic's car"   If nothing else, we can call it "character"....

 

One thing we know about windows 7, is it's capable of doing some things servers do, but it wasn't designed for that (or I should say, it's been intentionally limited in that capacity).  I might suggest, depending on how much of an inconvenience it is (your machine's poor behaviour), vs. how much you are willing to learn in the process (to obtain that perfection)... what about installing something like Ubuntu (or some other OS that's as easy to use, and more than up to the task) on it?  I assume it's function as a server is really just SMB, like you are just serving up media from file shares. (\\machine\path\to\movie)

 

The reason I say this, is because you can pretty much take a default installation, it will read windows formatted disks, no-problem, and it generally doesn't do anything to surpise you.  Are there any other factors? like... do you have a domain controller sitting in your home? or are these just local accounts on the computer, or just accessible without logging in?

[Wadzinsky]

8 minutes ago, valleykid said:

do you have a domain controller sitting in your home? or are these just local accounts on the computer, or just accessible without logging in?

Nah.  bare-bone win7 install with everything stripped out to fit on a 16gb ssd.  Then it just serves up files from 2 4tb drives.  No media serving software, just SMB.  I thought about doing Ubuntu, but my knowledge of Linux is very limited.  Only used it a few times to mod some Xboxes to run XBMC and put bigger hard drives in xbox ones just to see if it could be done.  and it can.

 

I just recently upgraded the XBMC xboxes to Firesticks.  They are so much more useful and use far less power

[valleykid]

I have to head off for a bit, but here is a screenshot from a Ubuntu system, using KDE of all things as my desktop, it really is this simple   I'm not sure if there is a way to private message here, I registered to respond to you, but feel free too, if you want to consider the option, I'd help ya get set up!

 

 

[Wadzinsky]

definitely interested!!

 

I do need one other function tho.  Once a month, the server wakes itself, then wakes each of my other PC's to do a backup that is stored on the server.  Then they all shutdown when done.  I would have to be certain Linux could handle that.. 

[valleykid]

I'm going to jump out on a limb and say yes, yes that can be done.  I have more questions than answers at this point, but we can sort that out.  PM me, and we will figure it out.  I'm GMT-4 (Atlantic coast in Canada), in case some voice time is needed, and we both need to be present during waking hours.  I'm certain we can tame this beast. lol