Did anyone try any of my suggestions in the end ?

I'm just wondering if you were also getting that message in VMC about being connected to the Internet ?

Cheers

Why don´t you use this tool? It seems to do everything automatically, i.e. waking up the other PC (you need one license for each PC) or keeping the "server" running while other PCs are turned on.

maltic:

Why don´t you use this tool? It seems to do everything automatically, i.e. waking up the other PC (you need one license for each PC) or keeping the "server" running while other PCs are turned on.

Which tool?

I am starting to think again about trying to put this whole S3 sleep on the server into use again and I'm going to tackle it bit by bit.

My first challenge is trying to get my Harmony remote control to be able to control the on/off state of the Media Center PC.  My remote can send the "power command" to the PC and this does turn it on and off (wake/S3), the problem is the remote needs to always be aware of the PC's power state.  Whenever the PC turns off automatically (to sleep), or turns on per the WOL function, or wakes up to do other tasks (like record), the remote control's "known power state" gets out of sync with the PC.

Is there a way to set up the Media Center remote control so any button (such as "the green button") always turns the PC ON?

If I could figure out how to make this happen, I think I could get everything else to work with a little work.  So far, it seems to be only the power button on the remote that is able to wake it up.  I can wake it up using a regular keyboard (any key) or using a regular mouse (moving the mouse), but need to make it so "any key" on the remote will wake it up to make this work.

Any suggestions?

Oops - sorry ...

http://www.enviprot.com/produkt8.htm

So did you ever get a proper solution to this?

This question was asked over at xpmediacentre.com.au so I created a small VMC/Win7 background application that will send a magic packet when you start Media centre. You can also call it from a menu tile (initially stored in the Progam Library section).

You just need to edit the settings.xml file that is stored in the \Program Files\WOLPacket directory to include the mac address of the PC you want to wake. You can also hide the confirmation popup by setting the popup flag to false.

You can get it from here

Just saw this thread now, I know I'm a bit late, but reading all these tools/hacks makes me cringes since I've solve this problems a long time ago. Go to device manager and double click on your network adapter > Power Management tab > check "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standy". This makes the computer wake up when the network card hears ANY packet that is directed at it. All I have to do is use the computer as if it is awake all the time. If it is not awake, it will wake itself up within a few seconds. http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2214/powerwakeup.png

That's all well and good, except for if your router sends stray packets to that PC and keeps it awake.

Allowing your PC to wake on any activity is generally a nightmare.

There are no reason why a router would be sending stray packets at all. For about 3 years, I published the webguide on the internet on port 8000 and still it would stay asleep. Wireshark will help diagnose why there are unicast packets directed at the media center.

I must admit I don't have media center extenders /upnp media share running on my network. So I'm not sure how such environment would work. Broadcast packets may not wake up the machine. 

addp009:

Just saw this thread now, I know I'm a bit late, but reading all these tools/hacks makes me cringes since I've solve this problems a long time ago.

Go to device manager and double click on your network adapter > Power Management tab > check "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standy". This makes the computer wake up when the network card hears ANY packet that is directed at it. All I have to do is use the computer as if it is awake all the time. If it is not awake, it will wake itself up within a few seconds.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2214/powerwakeup.png

Believe me I tried that at the very beginning, plus I have revisited it many times.

Read through some of my posts above to understand more about the issues.

As mentioned above, the #1 problem is keeping our Harmony remote control in sync with the Media Center's on/off state. For example, if Media Center wakes up without the remote control, then when someone tries to watch TV, the remote actually turns the PC off.

Then there are all of the other issues, including the fact that the client Media Center PCs don't seem able to update the Recorded TV list once the serving Media Center has been a sleep for a while. The only solution for this I've found is to constantly reboot the client Media Center PCs whenever we want to watch TV.

Unfortunately, after probably 100's of hours of struggle, I have resorted to leaving our main Media Center PC on 24/7. This solution works flawlessly. All PC's, including clients keep their Recorded TV up to date, remote controls always work, the server doesn't fall asleep while serving TV, etc.

Our 6 client Media Center PCs do use S3 sleep, but our main Media Center PC server runs 24/7.

Maybe once Windows 7 gets on my main Media Center PC I'll revisit S3 again for it.

Why not just have the harmony not send power commands at all. Set it up so that the harmony remote thinks the PC is on the whole time. This way if the PC isn't on then you just hit help on the remote and tell it the PC is t on it will then send the power command. If the PC is on then there is no issue..... Option 2: have harmony remote send a "green button" signal when instead of he power signal to turn the PC on. This way if the PC is in S3 it will wake up. If it is on then it would just bring vmc back to the main screen.

 DVRMSToolbox has a WOL feature.

dgaust:

So did you ever get a proper solution to this?

This question was asked over at xpmediacentre.com.au so I created a small VMC/Win7 background application that will send a magic packet when you start Media centre. You can also call it from a menu tile (initially stored in the Progam Library section).

You just need to edit the settings.xml file that is stored in the \Program Files\WOLPacket directory to include the mac address of the PC you want to wake. You can also hide the confirmation popup by setting the popup flag to false.

You can get it from here

 

Hello Dgaust

On what I presume is your website here there was mention in the comments about adding an option:

"Any chance we could get a setting to turn off the automatic wakeup at Media Center startup and just have it accessible via the tile?"

Was this feature added? And I can't download WOLPacket from the website it says Access Denied but I am logged in. 

Many Thanks. 

P.S Any update on myVPN ? 

 

 I've just tried testing this WOL Packet add-in for Media Center and it doesn't seem to work for me. It does not wake up my other Media Center.

However if I use WOL Cmd as per my previous instructions in this thread that does wake up the main Media Center PC. 

Has anyone else used this WOL Packet add-in and got it working ?

Thanks

cw-kid:

 I've just tried testing this WOL Packet add-in for Media Center and it doesn't seem to work for me. It does not wake up my other Media Center.

However if I use WOL Cmd as per my previous instructions in this thread that does wake up the main Media Center PC. 

Has anyone else used this WOL Packet add-in and got it working ?

Thanks

 

 

Bump anyone else tried using this WOL Packet add-in ?