Question A Quirk With My New 2-Port KVM Switch -- Catch-22?

[BonzaiDuck]

Last year I had my legendary vaping-pen/static-charge accident and the trail of sweat and tears that ended a few months ago troubleshooting the hardware changes I had to make. [Many members have read about it by now -- the accident, that is . . . ]

Early in the game before I concluded that the motherboard USB controller had died because of the static discharge, I frantically started pulling peripheral (USB) components out of the equation. Chief among them was my 4-port Avocent "DVI" KVM switch. It had one port I would never need to use, and I'm eliminating the need for a second port. I decided, for elimination of desk clutter, to get a really good 2-port switch.

I settled on this StarTech KVM.

KVMs always have some limitations. Sometimes there are workarounds, and I'm still exploring some with regard to 2.1 audio. Ideally, I'd like to share a 5.1 speaker system between the two PCs.

I'm a stickler for insisting that certain things work properly on my computers. I must have Sleep and Hibernate working tip-top on them. Every system has its own battery-backup and shuts down in less than four minutes after a power outage. I'd just as soon leave the systems in sleep or hibernation whenever I leave the house for a few hours. And if I'm not at my desk, the energy-saving is a plus.

After connecting the KVM and verifying that it all worked properly, I discovered that I could only put the currently-selected PC into manual sleep or hibernate, and if I switched to the other computer after the hibernated system was "off", the action of switching to the second computer would wake the first system. It would seem that the only way to put both systems into a sleep or hibernate state requires setting the Power Options for at least one computer to enter the sleep state after so many minutes of inactivity. Then I could hibernate the currently selected system and walk away from my desk expecting both systems to (eventually) be in sleep or hibernate.

I'm trying to figure out, if possible, how I can hibernate both systems manually so that they stay hibernated until I want to wake them -- either one or both. I still have some things to try. For instance, I could just unplug the mouse and keyboard cables from one or the other system before switching to the second system. But -- would unplugging the keyboard and mouse wake the first computer? I might try that today.

 

[Jimminy]

See if something like the below app could be used to have a delay till it sleeps. I guess you'd need the program on both machines. Set the timer on first machine, switch to second machine, set it's timer, then walk off. Maybe use a time delay of 30 seconds?

www.sleeptimer.net/en/

I found this one, but there's probably others. Just see if something might work for you.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

See if something like the below app could be used to have a delay till it sleeps. I guess you'd need the program on both machines. Set the timer on first machine, switch to second machine, set it's timer, then walk off. Maybe use a time delay of 30 seconds?

www.sleeptimer.net/en/

I found this one, but there's probably others. Just see if something might work for you.

Based on some prior recollections and as vague as they may be, I'm thinking that it's possible to disable HID/keyboard/mouse "wake from sleep/hibernate" and assign it to the power-on button or some other sleep button. I'll poke around in Windows today and see if I can find it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Had a chat with the Startech tech-support. I had already suspected as much, but wanted confirmation and only tech-support would know of something to be done with the KVM switch before I proceeded to disable wake-from-USB/HID-devices. I should just be able to use the power button. Going to try it now.

[5 minutes later . . . ] Yeah. That's the solution. Turn off all USB wake-up, and use the power switch to wake up either computer. Good enough. Now I'll write my Amazon review for the KVM. This is not a major shortcoming. In fact, it is just as well, because fiddling around on my desk sometimes causes the mouse to move and wake up a system unintentionally.

Works for me and good enough for me . . .