Resume from hibernate via remote control

[Pandamonium]

I would love to be able to turn my HTPC on without having to reach for the power button on the machine. My power management is set up so that pressing the power button on the MCE remote puts the machine in hibernate. (Originally it would go into standby).

When it used standby, I could resume the machine and everything was glorious. The problem with that arrangement was
1) My LED blinks in standby. It shines bright enough to keep me awake.
2) The PSU and case fans spin as if the machine were fully on. The box is close enough to my bed that this is really annoying.

I found that hibernate shuts the fans down AND stops the blinking. However, I can't turn the thing on with my remote. Is there some kind of IR receiver that I can plug into a PS2 port (NOT USB- if USB would wake from hibernate, my current setup should be fine..) that I can ocnfigure in Windows?

The MCE remotes have a preprogrammed IR frequency they send to turn the HTPC on/off. I need to be able to configure a PS2-IR dongle to read that frequency and send the necessary keystrokes my BIOS wants to wake from hibernate. I know my machine can resume from hibernate without user input because it turns itself on to record my TV shows and puts itself back into hibernate afterwards. So either an obscure software solution or a brute hardware solution should work. Any ideas?

BTW:
Mobo: ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 w/ latest BIOS
Case/PSU: Silverstone LC11 w/ stock PSU
IR: Retail Microsoft MCE Remote/IR transceiver via USB, MCE Remote Keyboard

 

[Auric]

Consult yer mobo manual, enter Setup and in the Power Management section change the Suspend mode to S3 with no blinky option... or something (it's prolly set to S1 with blinking LED now). Then in Stand By it should appear totally off but of course a trickle of power will be use to maintain the system state in memory. That should fix you up the EZ way.

 

[Pandamonium]

The motherboard manual states that the LED will blink when in standby. I don't have options for LEDs or fans either. I'm thinking about disconnecting the power header to LED- but then that still leaves me with the fans.

 

[Auric]

Got latest BIOS? Are there options for suspend states? S1 does not shut off fans while S3 does. email ze manufacturer's support.

 

[Pandamonium]

Updated BIOS already. My motherboard/PSU's S3 does not disable fans. S3 is standby, which I had no problems shutting down or restoring from. The problem is resuming from S4 (hibernate). My problem with S3 is that S3 blinks a LED and runs my case fans at full speed. S4 kills the led and fans, but doesn't resume from my MCE remotes. (Which are IR, but send IR to a USB-based receiver)

 

[Varun]

I just looked at your motherboard manual and it has no option for Suspend S3. It only has Suspend to Ram as Auto which obviously is S1 if the fans are running. That's too bad because that would be the easist solution.

What you require is a Wake on USB setting, and there is a jumper on your board to turn that on. Give that a shot and it should turn itself on when it senses the USB activity from your remote.

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: Pandamonium
Updated BIOS already. My motherboard/PSU's S3 does not disable fans. S3 is standby, which I had no problems shutting down or restoring from. The problem is resuming from S4 (hibernate). My problem with S3 is that S3 blinks a LED and runs my case fans at full speed. S4 kills the led and fans, but doesn't resume from my MCE remotes. (Which are IR, but send IR to a USB-based receiver)

Just to clarify this for you, S1 is Standby with only the hard drive and monitor off, S3 is standby with everything off but a trickle to keep the RAM refreshed, and S4 is hibernate.

 

[Pandamonium]

Right. Before I played with my settings, Windows had a standby mode. I never checked to see if my CPU was active, but at the very least, it powered down my hard drive.

When I changed bios settings (enabling suspend to ram was among the changes), Windows had a hibernate option. When I hibernate, I can tell that my ram contents are being written to the hard drive and the machine is basically off.

I haven't had any luck finding hardware to turn on a computer via MCE remote. I'm starting to think I'll need a new motherboard that will wake from hibernate or give me more detailed S3 options. Any ideas?

 

[Varun]

Did you try wake on USB?

 

[Pandamonium]

Yep. It didn't work. I've also got the jumper set to provide power to USB. I'm beginning to think that the only way to fix this one is to just get another motherboard. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1970951 is the motherboard I'm thinking about.