SPCR

There's an interesting article here on the various suspend and standby modes offered in modern PCs.

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020927S0028

Of these, for silent PC enthusiasts, the most interesting is S3 suspend, aka "suspend to RAM" mode. That's because:

1) The time to suspend and time to resume from suspend is very fast-- about 3 seconds max.

2) The computer LOOKS powered down when in this mode; in that all fans, all hard drives, pretty much everything is turned off. Eg total silence.

3) You can wake from this mode via power button press, ps/2 activation, or usb activation.

It's a lot like hibernation, except the risk of power outage would lose your current state. But much faster! Hibernation is kind of a pain because the more stuff you have in memory, the longer it takes to spool memory contents to/from disk before shutting down/starting up (as much as 30 sec or more!). With S3 suspend to ram, that delay is nonexistant, so it's really a much more convenient power saving state.

To enable this mode, I had to turn on S3 suspend as the default mode in my BIOS under the "power saving" section (options were S1 and S3, most BIOSes default to S1 which is the oldest, lamest mode). After I did that, clicking Start, Turn Off, Standby, in Windows XP automatically enters this suspend to ram mode. No reinstallation or configuration was required at all.

I am currently experimenting with this mode on my HTPC. In Cntrol Panel, Power settings I set the system to standby after 30 mins of inactivity. I am using Windows Media Center edition, which includes support for standby; if a recording is scheduled the machine wakes itself up automatically, records, then goes back to sleep 30 minutes later. So software can clearly initiate the wake up event. I strongly suspect that a Scheduled Task would also wake up the machine automatically as well.

While this may not be terribly useful for those of you doing folding or some other activity requiring 100% CPU usage, it's great for lightly used machines. It doesn't get much quieter than "OFF"!

I've been using this for nearly two years (when I bought this computer). The few second delay is because the HD(s) have to spin up. Hibernation is not really an option for me, as the RAID gets initialized every time I wake up from hibernation (and it takes ~20 sec). This does not happen with STR(S3).

The only caveat is when the power goes out, so make sure to save if one is working on something important. And, IIRC I couldn't set the max. mem settings from BIOS, the suspend dies (just does a clean boot) if I do max 'em.

Cheers,

Jan

The other thing I haven't quite been able to figure out is how to set up USB devices to wake up the system. I know in Device Manager under the USB device entries there was a Power tab with a checkbox "Allow this device to wake up computer" but I can't seem to find that any more (?)

But yeah, S3 suspend is fantastic.. it really delivers "instant on" functionality.

wumpus wrote:The other thing I haven't quite been able to figure out is how to set up USB devices to wake up the system. I know in Device Manager under the USB device entries there was a Power tab with a checkbox "Allow this device to wake up computer" but I can't seem to find that any more (?)

Some motherboards have jumpers to select which ports have startup capabilities. There might also be some settings in the BIOS, depending on motherboard.

Cheers,

Jan

whoa i didn't know about this feature, anyone know if it exists for the A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2.0? going to poke around in the bios now...

I've also been using this for years. It took a long time for mobo BIOSes and device drivers to all be fully compliant, and it nver really worked before WinXP. And getting the wake-on-USB to work was something I've been struggling with for longer than I can recall. Some mobos don't support USB wake from S3. If they do, it's either a BIOS option or a jumper, or sometimes both. BUT...the trick is that XP won't natively recognize this feature even if all is enabled. MS won't admit this, and neither will any hardware company. I finally found the solution while poking around on Epox's FTP, which is fairly amazing since I never have owned anything from Epox. Once all the motherboard settings are correct, you need a small registry patch. Buried in the Epox FTP was this little miracle-just copy it to notepad, name it s3.reg, merge it, and reboot. It will work on any system as long as everything else is compliant.

apparently my p4s533 (asus) supports this feature and i'm really looking forward to use it! I enabled it, but it had this to say

"To Support STR (suspend-to-ram) +5vsb of the power supply should be able to provide current larger than 720 mA"

I'm not really sure how to check this, or how to confirm it?

The current provided by +5Vsb rail should be written on the sticker, right on the power supply.

sppenguin ASUS manual wrote:To Support STR (suspend-to-ram) +5vsb of the power supply should be able to provide current larger than 720 mA

A fairly meaningless statement as it depends how much stuff you have connected to the +5VSB rail! But in any event (IIRC) the old ATX spec was for 1A on that rail, many recent psus have had 1.5A and latest ATX spec is for 2A.

I haven't got S3 implemented so can't claim working knowledge, but seems to me you will have 3 prerequisites:
1) Select S3 mode in BIOS options (as per wumpus)
2) registry patch (as per Elite)
3) All my mobos have jumpers to determine whether the PS/2 & USB ports get power from +5V or +5VSB rails: you will need to ensure your wakeup device (mouse/keyboard) gets power from +5VSB otherwise you are limited to using the power button on case to revive things.

Once all the motherboard settings are correct, you need a small registry patch. Buried in the Epox FTP was this little miracle-just copy it to notepad, name it s3.reg, merge it, and reboot. It will work on any system as long as everything else is compliant.

I found some google hits on the text, but only 2 links total, and both of them referred to nForce2 motherboards.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=U ... gle+Search

Personally on my i875 board I got some weird results with the above reg hack-- once I entered it, the power switch no longer worked to wake my computer from standby! Doh! I had to hold it down for 4 secs to effectively power off the machine, then reboot.

dukla2000 good tip-- I still can't get my machine to wake from USB (although power switch, and I'm assuming ps2 kb/ms would work fine), so I'll have to check the mobo for the jumpers to set USB power from +5VSB..

Hm, I'm using an 875 board and I need to use the reg file to wake from USB. I never tried the power switch though.

wumpus wrote:

Personally on my i875 board I got some weird results with the above reg hack-- once I entered it, the power switch no longer worked to wake my computer from standby! Doh! I had to hold it down for 4 secs to effectively power off the machine, then reboot.

Something else just occurred to me-is your USB2 controller enabled, and if so what version of the Intel INF do you use? If I enable the USB2.0 on my Asus P4C800-E it sometimes won't wake, but it seems to be an issue with the Intel driver...I never connected it with the reg file since I've used it on a lot of boards.

dukla2000 wrote: 3) All my mobos have jumpers to determine whether the PS/2 & USB ports get power from +5V or +5VSB rails: you will need to ensure your wakeup device (mouse/keyboard) gets power from +5VSB otherwise you are limited to using the power button on case to revive things.

I've been wondering how to get the damn keyboard to wake the PC from standby. I have had it set in the BIOS to wake with the spacebar for the longest time. Of course, it didn't work because (being the amateur that I am) I never thought to look for a jumper setting in the manuel that controls this.

Works like a charm now, thanks.

hrm i can't seem to get my monitors to wake back up after the s3 suspend.

i press the power button on the computer, and the hd light turns on, but the power light keeps blinking and the monitor power lights keep blinking too... nothing.

i haven't tried that registry patch yet though, maybe it would help... also i'm not sure i have the right jumpers set on my motherboard, if there are any.

Look in your BIOS and see what the power options for the video are. My Asus board has several to choose from.

Spacey, try reverting to non-overclocked settings. I have found that S3 will not resume correctly with some overclocks.

It could also be a driver issue. Which version of the NVIDIA IDE drivers are you using, the SW IDE drivers or the "In-the-Box" drivers, which are slightly modified Microsoft drivers. I have found that the "In-the-Box" drivers have better compatability.

can suspend be engaged by a windows shortcut or such?

Kalel83 wrote:can suspend be engaged by a windows shortcut or such?

The typical way of doing it in Windows XP is through Start --> Turn Off Computer --> Stand By. If you hold down the Shift key when you get to this point, the "Stand By" button will change to "Hibernate", which saves the current state to the hard drive instead of keeping it in memory.

If you go to Control Panel --> Power Options, you will see several more options. One of them is to have the button on your computer put your computer into standby, hibernation, or shutdown.

i have a abit kv7 and enabled this in the bios and applied the regpatch. when i hit standby it shoots to the videocard bios screen and then goes to logon, it never goes into this standby mode? any ideas?

When troubleshooting standby issues keep in mind that both your BIOS and every single device driver on your machine must be compliant. And I also wouldn't bother with anything other than WinXP. The simple truth is that power management issues are at the bottom of the list for hardware makers, so you're pretty much left to yourself to get it working(if it's even possible). The Abit K7V was probably among the first boards to support Suspend-to-RAM, so it's entirely possible that is wasn't implemented correctly. I know some Soyo boards from that era claimed to support it and then the claim was withdrawn since it never did work.

It's surprising how immature this S3 suspend-to-ram feature is, given how long we've had ACPI, power management, etc!

Windows XP S3 suspend does work on all the systems I've built up in the last year or so, HOWEVER, getting them to wake from USB can be a pain (as documented above).

It's definitely worth investigating because you just go wrong with ZERO moving parts..

Kalel83 wrote:i have a abit kv7 and enabled this in the bios and applied the regpatch. when i hit standby it shoots to the videocard bios screen and then goes to logon, it never goes into this standby mode? any ideas?

I believe the Abit KV7 is a fairly new board... VIA KT600 chipset, if I am not mistaken. I have been using the S3 Suspend-to-RAM since the year 2000, with several different motherboards and versions of Windows (mostly 98 and XP). In my experience, most problems are caused by the BIOS or incompliant drivers.

Is your computer setup to use ACPI, both in the BIOS and in the Device Manager? What devices do you have installed in your computer? Do you have the latest BIOS and drivers? If you go to Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Event Manager, do you see any error messages, especially in the System section? Buggy firewall and antivirus programs (anything that uses a filter driver) can also cause problems.