Arksoft is proud to present "The Hibernator", the next useful tool to aid in your PC driven Home Theatre bliss.
Update 02/05/2005. Version 2.1 Released
Now work automatically with any locale and version of MCE. (Also minor bug fixes)
Update: 20/11/2005. Version 2.0 Release, now includes disk and network monitoring!
Given the time and effort that has gone into this application and the development and support of Crunchie I have decided that I will begin accepting donations.
If this application or other Arksoft Productions can or have saved you time, pain, or money then please consider donating. Your generosity will be very much appreciated and every dollar does make a difference! Please click below if you would like to contribute.
and now on to the good stuff! What is "The Hibernator" all about?
1.0 Introduction.
Since the introduction of Windows Media Centre 2005 it has become apparent that many problems exist across varying hardware and software components that cause the APM function of PCs to malfunction. My system would wake correctly from hibernate (not standby) but irrespective of what Power Management settings I applied it would never go back to sleep of it’s own accord.
This problem is encountered regularly on Windows based machines (not just MCE).
I grew tired of continually trying different hardware and driver combinations in order to make what I consider basic functionality work.
The end result is that I have written an application to take back control of the machine and work as advertised, discarding the worthless software that is Windows Power Management.
2.0 What does it do?
“The Hibernator” is installed as a screensaver. Its’ purpose, when activated, is to monitor CPU, Disk and Network activity for a user set period of time. Once that time has expired “The Hibernator” will check to see if the average CPU, Disk and Network utilisations are below a user set threshold. If they are then the machine is put into the suspend mode of your choice.
3.0 Why a screensaver?
The odd thing about PC power management and idle timeouts is that APM regularly gets it wrong where the screensaver always works. Why this happens is anyone’s guess but the fact remains that the screensaver idle timeout is reliable. Using it to check for mouse/keyboard or remote input seemed the logical choice.
4.0 Installation.
Installing “The Hibernator” is as easy as clicking on “Arksofts Hibernator.msi” to run the installer. The screensaver must be installed to your Windows folder. It will choose this by default so please do not change the default location during installation. Once the installer is complete you can activate “Arksoft’s Hibernator” from the Display Properties dialog (see below).
5.0 Configuration.
Start the Windows Screensaver dialog by right clicking on your desktop and selecting properties (or via Control Panel->Display). Once the Display Properties dialog appears click on the “Screen Saver” tab.
Select “Hibernator” as your preferred screensaver.
Set the Wait textbox to the timeout value of your choice and click on “Settings”.
“The Hibernator” Configuration dialog will appear.
5.1 Hibernator Options.
5.1.1 Screensaver Selection
The “Use Screensaver” checkbox allows the user to choose whether a screensaver should be used or not within “The Hibernator”. You may for instance choose to not protect your display and have “The Hibernator” go to sleep immediately after the screensaver timeout expires. Alternately you may wish to protect your screen for a time prior to the machine going to sleep. Setting the screensaver to activate after 1 minute idle time and setting “The Hibernator” to sleep 9 minutes later will provide a total of 10 minutes idle time before sleeping whilst protecting your monitor for 9 of those minutes.
5.1.2 Metrics
New in version 2 is the Metrics Group. This window provides “by the second” information of the metrics being recorded during a profile operation. Metrics are provided for current and average CPU, Disk and Network Utilisation.
Network Utilisation will monitor and average ALL network interface cards present in the machine.
If you have selected no screensaver you can watch the activity of your PC while profiling takes place. This can aid you in the manual setting of thresholds by seeing immediate feedback on the activity of your system dependant upon background applications.
i.e. You can start live TV and minimise MCE then profile the machine to see how much CPU and Disk activity your machine uses whilst watching live TV. You could also try watching a file across the network to see how much network traffic is generated.
5.1.3 Resume from Suspend Executable.
5.1.3.1 Execute the following upon Resume.
A great feature of “The Hibernator” is the ability to run a batch script or executable upon resume from suspend. This allows a great deal of flexibility. In the case of MCE you could for instance stop and restart the MCE services to ensure smooth, trouble free operation and recording. A sample script that does this, called “MCEcleanup.bat” is installed in the Windows folder when “The Hibernator” is installed.
For device drivers it is possible to use a utility called dumppo to stop and restart stubborn (non APM compliant) hardware, thereby allowing a system that could never hibernate and resume to work flawlessly, without the need to spend endless months and dollars trying to find a configuration that works.
Simply enable this check box and browse to choose the executable or batch file you would like to run when the machine wakes up. You can also pass command line arguments to the script or program by entering the required switches in the “Arguments” field. Some Arguments may need to be quoted with “ in order to run. A simple test will verify this. The log file <WINDIR>\Hibernator.log can be checked to see what was run.
5.1.4 Suspend/Threshold Configuration.
5.1.4.1 Suspend Mode
Use this dropdown to select what mode “The Hibernator” should use to put the machine to sleep. Strictly speaking there are only two modes available at the time of writing. Suspend and Hibernate.
Typically a Standby or Hibernate event will run around “asking” all applications and device drivers if it’s ok to put the machine to sleep. If any answer “no” the machine will fail to go to sleep with an error message such as “MCE remote device xxxx is preventing the machine from hibernating.” If this happens you may choose one of the forced options. The forced options will send the machine to sleep irrespective of the state of other components.
5.1.4.2 Suspend After.
This is the amount of time in seconds that “The Hibernator” will wait before sending the machine to sleep.
5.1.4.3 CPU, Network and Disk Idle thresholds.
This is the CPU, Disk and Network utilisation values that are checked during the last 30 seconds of the timeout value specified above. If the CPU, Disk and Network utilisation are all under the set thresholds when the suspend timeout expires the machine will go to sleep. If you are running something on the machine (MCE, live TV, downloading, defrag, Crunching video etc), the CPU, Network or Disk utilisation will be above the set threshold and the machine will stay awake. The suspend timer is then reset and the screensaver will continue to run (if selected), otherwise the program exits and will not run again until the next time the Windows screensaver timeout activates “The Hibernator”.
Disk and Network traffic during real write/read operations on today’s equipment will generally result in traffic from 10kb/sec up to several MB/s. Typically when the machine is inactive there will be next to no disk or network utilisation. Setting these values low but well above your idle values should enable accurate measurement of when your machine is truly idle.
CPU thresholds can be set relatively high as the disk and Network monitoring will prevent suspend events on MCE machines.
5.1.5 Profile/Apply/Exit/Help Buttons.
5.1.5.1 Profile (setting CPU, Network and Disk thresholds).
Because “The Hibernator” works by monitoring CPU, Network and Disk utilisation it is necessary to profile your particular machine in order to predict when the machine can be considered idle.
To accurately predict the idle state of your machine you should close any applications that do not normally run on your machine when the machine is idle. For best results I would recommend profiling your machine about 5 minutes after a reboot BEFORE you run any other applications.
Clicking "Profile" will test your CPU, Network and Disk utilisation for a period of 30 seconds.
If you have selected a screensaver it will run for the duration of the test. (do not move the mouse or interrupt the screensaver during this time).
At completion of profiling “The Hibernator” will set your CPU, Network and Disk thresholds to a value suitable for your machine. If for some reason you find your machine sleeping when it shouldn’t you can manually adjust these thresholds to suit before applying your settings.
5.1.5.2 Apply.
When finished configuring “The Hibernator” click Apply to activate the settings.
5.1.5.3 Exit.
Will exit the configuration dialog.
5.1.5.4 Help.
Clicking help will direct your browser to the support page for “The Hibernator”.
Hosted at the best MCE site in the world.
5.1.6 Donations Button.
“The Hibernator” is provided to you free of charge and will always remain so. That being the case it does take considerable time and effort to develop tools such as “The Hibernator” and “Crunchie, the DVR-MS to XVID converter”.
I hope that you find this tool to be useful. If you do and you can see that in some way it has saved you pain, time or money then I would be very happy to accept a donation, regardless of the size, for my efforts. Any and all donations are very much appreciated!
6.0 Assumptions
This version of "The Hibernator" monitors disk and network traffic as well as CPU usage. It is assumed that your machine has at least one network interface (including a Network Interface Card, or a Dialup network connection), if neither are present I cannot predict what the behavior of "The Hibernator" will be as I don't own a machine without a network. Please let me know if you are in this situation.
7.0 Conclusion
“The Hibernator” has been a fun project to do and has enabled me to beat the final thing that never worked on my configuration. I hope that you find it functional too. I would appreciate any feedback whether it be suggestions, comments, bug reports etc. You can always find me lurking around my support threads at
The Australian XP Media Center Community.
