mikehayton:

From your comments, the 3am wake up time is the periodic scanning kicking. The person I want to talk to about this is on vacation at the moment and back next week. So I wont have any further information on this 3am wake up time until sometime next week.

Hi Mike,

Assuming you're still doing 'greenbutton duty', did you get a chance to speak with your colleague about the periodic scanning yet?

Actually no. I forgot. I'll send an email now.

Some details:

The 3am scan is mcglidhost.exe kicking off its periodic scan of the channels for OTA guide listings. This is only if it didnt get a chance to do so during the day. It does this so you dont run out of guide listings.

The theory on the 5:54am wake up is that its ehrec scheduling a wake up 12 hours after the last recording started. ehrec computes the next scheduled recording time and if greater than 12 hours, snaps it back to 12 hours. This is to ensure if there's some tv scheuling change it will pick it up and process it. For this one you could try scheduling a recording at 11pm and seeing if it doesnt wake up until 10:54am

Cheers

Mike, thanks for the reply -- your time and the information really is appreciated.

I'm just thinking, as much as I welcome mcglidhost's concern for me running out of listings, I wish it would scan at a more convenient, or user configurable time, or at least when the OS is already awake.  This is OTA-- not like the epg out-of-band download which might need to be off peak/random to limit the load on the data provider's servers.

In case it helps, I always see this event at 03:00, even when the system has been used all day without a break by the family from breakfast through to midnight (eg. at weekends).  So it's very unlikely there was no opportunity for an OTA scan at some point during these 16 hour windows.

Your ehrec theory is interesting.  Would this second event still apply if I had no recordings scheduled?  I'm happy to experiment with this if it would be useful to you.

So for the periodic scanning, you can set a registry key to control the hour (in local time) that it will wake up.

The registry key is:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\BackgroundScanner

In this key, create a DWORD value called

PeriodicScanEnabled

 

And give it the hour that you want it to wake up. (so by default its 3 (for 3am). If you want 2pm, set it to 14)

 

On the ehrec side I dont know off the top of my head whether its clever enough to not do this if there's no recording requestings.

Can we disable this wake up?

Hi again Mike,

Thanks for the registry key tip -- I'll give it a test tonight.

So far as the ehrec issue is concerned, I've found that I do still get a wakup even if no recordings are scheduled. 

Assuming I've understood the TVP2008 strategy correctly, if my machine is left unused in S3 sleep for a day with no recordings scheduled, I can expect 3 wakeups -- 1 for epg download, 1 for periodic scan, and 1 from ehrec to check if the periodic scan amended my epg listings.  Just a enhancement suggestion, but maybe the periodic scan could invoke the ehrec check (if it's really required) during the same wakeup?

At least with say, PeriodicScanEnabled=21, I should be able to reduce the number of wakeups, by scheduling this event during prime time.  I'll post the results asap.

I can confirm that if I set the registry key DWORD value of

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\BackgroundScanner\PeriodicScanEnabled

it does control the 03:00 wakeup.

I installed TV Pack on my notebook so I could watch shows.  I too would like to disable this wakeup.  I'm tired of either having to pull my battery or find my laptop dead in the morning.

I have an ATSC Express tuner that I watch things every once in a while.  If I un-install the tuner or change it to NTSC would that fix it as well?

Information    03/10/2008 05:09:01    Power-Troubleshooter    1    None
--------------------------------------------------------------
Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Power-Troubleshooter
Date:          03/10/2008 05:09:01
Event ID:      1
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:      
User:          LOCAL SERVICE
Computer:      CENTRAL
Description:
The system has resumed from sleep.

Sleep Time: 03/10/2008 01:07:24
Wake Time: 03/10/2008 04:08:51

Wake Source: RTC

So why deos the event log show the time of this wake up as 4.08 but 5.09 in the summery of the same event?????
With the new registry edit my computer didn't wake at 3am, so thanks..just this one to resolve now..

Hello Cpt.Cosmos

I believe some times are displayed as local times, and some times are displayed as universal times.

Even if you live in the UK, I suppose the daylight saving shift could explain this one hour difference.

 

Thanks Mike for the registry key, and thanks PixelZ for trying it out.

I also gave a try to the registry trick, and left my computer in S3 sleep last night (I had been turning it off lately as I could not stand the 3am wake up call anymore)

Somehow I woke up around 2:30am last night and the computer was on, with the monitor on too. I guess it had just resumed from sleep.

Well maybe the 3am fix works (I need to check the event log) but that is not the end of my troubles yet. I will try to record a show every evening to see if it helps with the wake-up every 12h issue.

I hope that we can all make further progress. Thanks for sharing your observations.

 

 

 

Why do these wakeup events still occur even when the pc in question has never had any tv tuner hardware connected to it?

Does the fact that I use the watched folders reg entry to access recorded tv from another machine make vmc think it needs to get ota updates???

 

Thank you Microsoft for releasing the first cumulative update for the TV Pack.

Can we expect the resume-from-sleep issues to make it in the next cumulative update?

Again, than you for your work

-G

 

I have read through this entire thread, hoping to find a solution for a very similar, if not the same, problem.  The difference in my case is that the computer auto-wakes from standby every 2 hours!  Exactly 2 hours!  And stays on for exactly 2 minutes before going back to sleep.  I have searched and tried everything over the past few days to get it to stop this horrible behavior, but so far, no luck.  And the thing is, I don't have any TV tuners and never even use Media Center.  However, I traced the event logs and determined that the behavior started on the same day that I installed a game (The Witcher - Enhanced Edition) and inadvertently started the game the first time with a shortcut that said "Witcher - MCE".  When the MCE interface came up it was the first time I'd ever seen it, and at first, didn't even know what it was.  Now the damn thing has been hounding me ever since, and if I had any idea how to uninstall it, it would be gone in a heartbeat.
You guys have been looking at this for a long time.  If you know any way to totally disable MCE's ability to autowake the PC, please let me know!  I just wish I could get rid of it!
(Vista x64 Ultimate)

mxcrowe:

I have read through this entire thread, hoping to find a solution for a very similar, if not the same, problem.  The difference in my case is that the computer auto-wakes from standby every 2 hours!  Exactly 2 hours!  And stays on for exactly 2 minutes before going back to sleep.  I have searched and tried everything over the past few days to get it to stop this horrible behavior, but so far, no luck.  And the thing is, I don't have any TV tuners and never even use Media Center.  However, I traced the event logs and determined that the behavior started on the same day that I installed a game (The Witcher - Enhanced Edition) and inadvertently started the game the first time with a shortcut that said "Witcher - MCE".  When the MCE interface came up it was the first time I'd ever seen it, and at first, didn't even know what it was.  Now the damn thing has been hounding me ever since, and if I had any idea how to uninstall it, it would be gone in a heartbeat.
You guys have been looking at this for a long time.  If you know any way to totally disable MCE's ability to autowake the PC, please let me know!  I just wish I could get rid of it!
(Vista x64 Ultimate)

What about a system restore prior to running The Witcher via that MCE shortcut?