power management in Win98se

[bman1]

first off, hello everyone! i've been a member of the old AGN3d and now PC Abusers for some time, but only lurked here...now i'm in!

here's my problem:

my monitor will not "wake up" after the screen has been blank for extended periods (after Windows shuts it off). it will wake up ok from a screen saver, but not after the system turns the monitor off (doesn't happen all the time, but more frequently than not).


system info:

asus a7v (1004d BIOS)
1ghz tbird
radeon 64mb retail
mitsubishi diamond pro 91txm 21"
nothing is o/c'ed


i think i have the BIOS options set correctly (please let me know what they SHOULD be) for DPMS, etc. i have installed the newest drivers for my monitor and vid card.

standby/suspend are set to DISABLED in BIOS, and NEVER in power management. "Turn off monitor" is set to 20 minutes in Windows. the screen saver is "Blank Screen" @ 6 minutes.

i don't think it's any other device in the system, because all the periphs have been in other systems that use power management correctly...and have the newest drivers.

thanks for the help, and glad to be here!

 

[anazoal]

Actually, it my be your system crashing, and not a monitor related problem.

1. Set System standby to something longer than the 20 mins you have for monitor off, and
2. Set turn off hard disks to something more than 1. above.

Pls let me know if this works by sending me a msg.

 

[bman1]

set system standby options? i have it disabled in both the BIOS and Windows now...i don't want it to ever go into standby (i'm running seti). do you mean increase the time before shutting the monitor off?

my system is perfectly stable while i use it (q3, unreal tournament, etc for hours).

 

[AC]

what are u using to "wake up" the monitor? mouse, keybd, or power button?

did assign an irq to the video card? if not, do so.

 

[bman1]

i try to wake it up with the mouse...then the keyboard....but end of having to hit the reset button.

i'll check the IRQ settings. thanks. (i believe they are all auto right now).


Update:

i checked and the PCI slot IRQ's are set to "AUTO" in the BIOS.

the IRQ's in system properties show that my NIC (netgear310) and soundcard (ensoniq PCI) are sharing IRQ 4, along with the ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering.

the radeon is on IRQ 11.

 

[AC]

the sharing of the irq between NIC and the sound card is usually bad, see if u can separate them

or for diagnostic purposes, disable the drivers and set the monitor to power down after a short period of time and see if the problem persists

if it is gone, then u found the problem, if not, i'll keep thinking

 

[bman1]

update:

i just swapped PCI slots and my IRQ's are now as follows...

3 NETGEAR FA310TX Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter
3 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
4 Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI64
4 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
5 Sound Blaster PCI64 Legacy Device
10 Win95-98 Promise Ultra100 (tm) IDE Controller (PDC20265)
10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
11 Radeon DDR
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering

yippee...nothing is shared!

of course, i will now have to see if this solves the problem. the trouble is that the system wakes fine if you try right after it shuts the monitor off...it's after extended periods that cause the problem. hmmm...

will update asap. thanks again for the help!

 

[bman1]

ok, just got home and found the system non-responsive again.

new info:

i set TURN OFF MONITOR to 1 minute and then started up Q3. i joined a server as a spectator and let it sit. the monitor shut off as it should, but then wouldn't wake up to the mouse. it DID wake up when i hit the space bar. while it was out, the game played along just fine...so i believe the system isn't crashing.

?????

this is soooo frustrating!!!!!!!

 

[SlugwormX]

Hi,

The sharing of interupts nowadays is not a bad thing.

The IRQ steering that occurs allows the allocation of the same IRQs to device that reside on the PCI bus, I think. (This is VERY rusty info!)

IRQ steering seems not to work when you have devices on the ISA bus. These IRQs cannot be remapped.

Hold on......consults big book........Yep, PCI devices on a system that can IRQ Steer (bios and os), when they run out of IRQs, windows can reallocate them the same IRQ as another PCI device. This allows all devices in the system to work. Devices are disabled when irqs have run dry, in older systems.

As to power management in computers, there seems to be a lot of problems, esp. with win98se. It has quite a few it would seem.

It may just be something you have to put up with.

Hope some of this OT info helps.

SlugwormX

 

[AC]

some network cards and specifically the creative live! series sound card have problems with irq sharing

only when u run out of irq should irq sharing be necessary...but then, u need to adjust which devices share irqs to minimize conflicts (lot of tweaking required) and optimize performance

are u sure the pc is frozen? or does it just take a long time to respond?

try disabling the screen saver and only enable the monitor standby

 

[bman1]

are u sure the pc is frozen? or does it just take a long time to respond?

--yes, it is definitely non-responsive. when it functions correctly it only takes a few seconds to wake up.

try disabling the screen saver and only enable the monitor standby

--just tried this before i went to sleep last night...woke up and same problem. AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH! :|



would there be anything wrong with just leaving the screen saver to "blank screen" and never shutting the monitor off? would that damage the monitor in any way, or just use more electricity? that may be what i have to do.

 

[SemperFi]

Install 2000. I haven't had that problem since.

When I was running 98se I would have this problem often. One time I came up to the computer and moved the mouse then walked away for several minutes, when I came back the screen was just comming on. There was an error of some kind related to the screen saver. I turned off the screen saver and set the monitor to turn off sooner all was well.

I hope this works for you. If it does switch to 2000 and you can run screensaver again.

 

[Nih]

The windows irq info is not important as the bootup screen info. If the acpi controller is sharing you are going to encounter problems. If that is not an issue , maybe disable acpi altogether and see what happens , (you can do it through regedit. in the acpioption key set the value to 00, and then redetect hardware in windows after a reboot) I hope this helps.

 

[okydoky]

Gotta go with Nih here. ACPI was an issue with my 98se setup. Disabled it and caused more problems(Two of this and that...Phooey!!). Fresh install/ACPI disabled in bios and bam all is well in APM

 

[bman1]

thanks for all the replies. i installed win2000 on an empty partition and the problem has gone away.

i would've tried to disable ACPI in the BIOS, but i don't see that option on the A7V. it only has power management options that i have tried all settings (user defined...disabled...etc).

thanks again!