How does windows decide when to go into standby mode?

[MediumRare]

Hi, haven't posted in a while (although I regularly look).

I'm running XP home (SP3) and recently activated standby mode (after 5 minutes of inactivity). To my surprise, doing a scan with KProbe2 or CD-Speed doesn't stop windows from going into standby. So accessing an optical drive doesn't count, neither does a screen update or sporadic hard drive access (test with a Perl script).

Just what are the criteria then? Can someone fill me in?

Thanks.

G

[Ian]

I think it looks at keyboard/mouse activity. KProbe and CD-Speed would need to be smart enough to override Standby and I'm guessing they aren't.

If it was me, I'd just bump the standby time to something like 30 minutes.

[MediumRare]

Thanks, Ian. I've been running without standby for so long, that I'd normally just disable it again. But it does seem to work reliably with my new PC and saves a lot of electricity in the course of a weekend.

I set the time to 5 minutes because I also use my PC as a VCR and the software for the TV module (THC = Terratec Home Cinema) is a bit buggy: it can shut the PC down after a timed recording, but if you do so, the recording isn't saved. The solution is to set THC to end itself after the recording and use the timeout to put windows in standby.

I guess 10 min. would be safe to finish a quality scan @8x.

Another tack: since I'm using a Perl script to automatically run CDSpeed, KProbe and DVDScan, I could disable standby prior to the scan and restore it afterwards. I'll have to find the registry key for that.

G