Monitor On-Off Plug-In system standby and hibernate

Post your questions, bug reports and feature requests here
Post Reply
vaguy
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat May 24, 2014 2:50 am

Monitor On-Off Plug-In system standby and hibernate

Post by vaguy »

Just downloaded and installed trail version 7.0.1 of gPhotoShow Pro and version 2.1 of Monitor On-Off Plug-In. I'm running Windows XP SP3
Not doing anything fancy for a screensaver slideshow - a few vanilla jpg images to test with. No video, no audio.
What I'm most interested in is putting XP in standby or in hibernation after an hour.
Windows XP power management doesn't seem to want to standby or hibernate if timeout values are more than a few minutes.
I've stripped down Windows apps, drivers, etcetera to the bare minimum.
There are no external connections and I've made sure none of the scheduled tasks are functioning at the the time of the standby or hibernate request.
So, I decided to give the Monitor On-Off Plug-In a go, hoping to get consistent behavior in shutting down my system.
Documentation is almost nill on the Monitor On-Off Plug-In dialog box
Just an FYI, from gPhotoShow Pro Configuration, Plug-Ins, I can double-click the Monitor On-Off Plug-In to change its settings.
But by just highlighting the Plug-In, only the Check Updates button is enabled at the bottom; Configure Selected Plug-In and Uninstall Selected Plug-In are greyed out. So I have no way to uninstall the Plug-In. When I run Check Updates, there is no feedback.
So back to the Monitor On-Off v2.1.0 dialog box. There are 2 checkboxes at the bottom (one to prevent Windows from switching off monitors and one preventing Windows from switching off the system). It is unclear to me the behavior these checkboxes. Do they override Windows Power management settings? I have Windows Power Management set to shut the monitor off after 30 minutes and set to "Never" for both standby and hibernation (assuming that Monitor On-Off will take care of that). I have the Plugin Enabled, and set to to put system in standby after 1 hour. I have the Prevent Windows from switching off monitors unchecked and have tried the Prevent Windows from switching off system both checked and unchecked.

Bottom line, my screen saver kicks in after 10 minutes, the monitor shuts off after 30 minutes, but the system never goes into standby.

Anybody have any thoughts.
User avatar
gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: Monitor On-Off Plug-In system standby and hibernate

Post by gpb »

Hello,
first of all thank yolu very much for trying gPhotoShow pro. Now your questions:
vaguy wrote: Documentation is almost nill on the Monitor On-Off Plug-In dialog box
There is no documentation because the plugin should be very simple to use and options are almost self-explanatory, when you read "Switch of monitor system at a specified time" I think there is very little a documentation can say more then this.
vaguy wrote: Just an FYI, from gPhotoShow Pro Configuration, Plug-Ins, I can double-click the Monitor On-Off Plug-In to change its settings.
But by just highlighting the Plug-In, only the Check Updates button is enabled at the bottom; Configure Selected Plug-In and Uninstall Selected Plug-In are greyed out. So I have no way to uninstall the Plug-In. When I run Check Updates, there is no feedback.
This is a bug and will be fixed in the next update.
vaguy wrote: So back to the Monitor On-Off v2.1.0 dialog box. There are 2 checkboxes at the bottom (one to prevent Windows from switching off monitors and one preventing Windows from switching off the system). It is unclear to me the behavior these checkboxes. Do they override Windows Power management settings?
The purpose of these two checkboxes is exactly what is written on their labels, when they are ticked and gPhotoShow is running it will keep informing windows the system is busy so windows will no longer switch off monitor or switch off the system.
vaguy wrote: I have Windows Power Management set to shut the monitor off after 30 minutes and set to "Never" for both standby and hibernation (assuming that Monitor On-Off will take care of that). I have the Plugin Enabled, and set to to put system in standby after 1 hour. I have the Prevent Windows from switching off monitors unchecked and have tried the Prevent Windows from switching off system both checked and unchecked.

Bottom line, my screen saver kicks in after 10 minutes, the monitor shuts off after 30 minutes, but the system never goes into standby.
You should only configure the Plugin to put the system in standby after the amount of time you wish and do NOT check the two checkboxes labeled "Prevent...". The plugin should work also when they are ticked but in this case the windows power management will not turn off the monitor.
Anyway consider that the PlugIn relies on the windows Power Management API to put the system in stand-by and if the windows power management itself it not able to perform the operation it is very unlikely the plugin can do it.
Did you try to configure the plugin with a time shorter than 30 minutes (when monitor is still on) or to put the system in standby at a specified time ?
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
Post Reply