Sleepless HTPC User Tips
Topics
Need all Green Indicators
The PC will not be put into sleep/closedown until all indicators are green
In the above example the PC will not shutdown because:
- No User Input limit has not yet been reached
- CPU usage limit exceeded
- Disk Write limit exceeded
- Microsoft Media Center is recording
Context Help
The fields, buttons and controls on the Settings form have help that shows when the mouse is hovered above the item of interest. To turn that help on or off use the 'show tips' facility in the General tab of the Settings form.
To Get to the Settings
To get to the settings form, click on the dropdown arrow beside the question mark.
Process Monitoring
A process ID shown as '0' and with a green background means the process is not running.
To be able to select a process, it will need to be first started. For example, if you want to set QuickTimePlayer then the QuickTimePlayer has to be first running. Then click the Refresh button, go to the item and select the check box so it displays a tick.
Most of the processes under user control will normally be displayed by clicking the Refresh but there are some occasions where there is a need to show all running processes. The 'Show All Processes' will display an extended list.
Windows Media Center (WMC) Programs
For those who wish to set up processes to monitor for WMC, the following maybe of help
WMC is actually a number of programs:
- One program (the overarching control) is always active and operates in the background and Microsoft has made it so it can never be shut down (well, not easily anyway).
- Some programs (the recording ones) are fired up when WMC records.
- Other programs (the active viewing ones) are under your manual control and are invoked when you can see the WMC Screen.
All the WMC programs are prefixed with 'eh'.
Always open and controlling program:
- ehRecvr
Viewing Programs:
- ehShell
- ehSched
- ehTray
Recording programs:
- ehSched
- ehRec
- ehTray
- ehVid - Analyses and tidies up the video after the recording has stopped
Main Settings
If any individual setting is not required then 'uncheck' the Selection box.
The method use to stop Sleepless from shutting down the PC is to first set a trigger to a value that won't normally be exceeded when the PC is idling along. At any time the trigger value is exceeded then the delay timer is reset and a countdown commences. The delay countdown is provided to get around the problem of the PC shutting down if any setting drops below the Trigger value. For example, if there were a number of downloads being queued and there is a 2 second gap between each download. The countdown delay gets around that problem.
For all of the settings, experimentation is needed to select the best level of setting for your PC that will give the desired level of sensitivity.
