"Black screen" issue resuming from sleep

[divide_by_zero 7]

Hi all,

 

Anyone who has been running Media Center for awhile and browsed various related forums over the years knows about the craptastic "black screen" issue. For those who haven't encountered this, it occurs when you resume from sleep or a TV power-off, and wake the system only to find a completely black display. Ctrl/alt/del will bring up task manager, and you can kill/restart MC and go about your merry way. As far as I remember, it's related to HDMI handshake issues and how MC handles full-screen-exclusive UI.

 

I've lived with this issue for years, through several media center builds, three receivers, and two TVs. It's usually happened on maybe 1 out of 15 resume cycles. I noticed several years ago that it seemed to happen *much* more frequently if I left Media Browser open, so I would make a point to always hit the green button after a viewing session to go to the main MC menu and minimize the likelihood of the black screen issue being present when I would wake the system for it's next use. It was a fine workaround.

 

Fast forward to now, present day, running 7MC, MBC, and Breeze. I'm getting the black screen issue on resume every single time the machine wakes. 100%. This is our only means of TV/movie/netflix viewing, and it is rapidly killing the WAF. I've noticed that with recent builds, even if I press the green button to get back to the home screen, MBC will open instantly to my previous location (no login screen, which I get on a cold boot), which leads me to believe it's still running from memory instead of truly closing when the green button is pressed (as I believe was the case in previous versions). And I believe this behavior is causing the black screen issue.

 

This is a purpose-built media center with nothing aside from 7MC, MBC, LAV, Firefox, and TMT installed. Nothing gets installed/updated on this system *ever*, aside from MBC/server apps.

 

I realize that this is probably a rare case in an already very niche market, so I'm not expecting a solution to the longstanding black screen issue with MCE. Really I'm just hoping that there is a way to stop MBC to stop running in memory upon going back to the main MC UI - along the lines of a check-box in the settings that can be selected to fully exit the app, rather than leave it running in the background, as I think it's very likely this will help reduce the behavior back to acceptable levels. I've looked through the various menus several times and not found anything that will accomplish this.

Not sure if this should go in feature requests or what, but would greatly appreciate any help that can be provided.

Thanks!

db0

[chef 3745]

This happens to me all the time. Just the morning I had to restart my PC because of it. Now that I think of it I have started my PC every morning for the past couple years. I was glad to read I. Your comment that perhaps Ctrl alt and del will bring up the task manager to kill media center so a restart may not be needed.

[ebr 14912]

My first suggestion is to install the MCE Standby tool.  It will automatically shut down wmc when you sleep and bring it back up when you wake.  I've used this for years and no black screens.

 

Secondly, if you want to actually exit MB, then don't hit the green button.  That is not intended to exit an application, it is intended to "jump forward" to the start menu.  If you were to hit back from that point, you would be right back where you came from.  This is how WMC is designed to work - like a web browser with a page stack.

 

If you really want to exit MB you need to back all the way out of it.  Then WMC will actually shut it down.

[divide_by_zero 7]

Thanks for the responses guys!

 

ebr, appreciate the clarification re: "green button" press vs. backing out of the app. I'd always been under the impression that the green button took you home, and that other mce apps would close during this process.

 

Better still, the suggestion about MCE Standby Tool! I'd tried using this back in the day on my Vista system with mixed results, and then gave up when I upgraded to 7 and it didn't work. Since you're using it successfully, I figured it was worth revisiting. Much to my surprise, there was a 7-compatible beta available, which seems to work well! (Yeah, it's a 3+ year old beta, but a few test sleep/wake cycles worked fine, and with an SSD OS drive, there's not even any delay to deal with.)

 

So, many thanks. Chef, I highly recommend giving this a try - hopefully it will work as well for you as it is over here.

 

Cheers!

db0