PC Sleep Issues? Try Econap.

[Raptor6L 23]

Hi all

 

For a very long time now I have been battling sleep issues with my server. It’s nothing special, Win8.1 desktop style pc running WMC, Emby, NordVPN and uTorrent, and lots of storage managed by Drivepool.

 

Most of the time getting it to sleep was ok, but not great. Having it stay asleep until it was actually needed was an absolute nightmare. I think the most I got was about 15 minutes sleep, and the average would probably be about 4 or 5 minutes. I’d give up for long periods of time and just leave it as an always on server, but then it would get the better of me and I’d spend considerable time trying to get it right, but never actually getting there. I tried to source what was waking it through the Event Viewer, but the source was always “Unknown”. I discovered Emby is one of those unknown sources, waking it when wanting to do some remote viewing, but it was few in a long list.

 

After a bit more research I came across Econap (previously known as Stand-Bye!) which is a bit of very useful software that monitors a few key areas of pc activity, and uses benchmarks in those areas to either keep the pc awake, or put it to sleep. When you install it, it scans your pc and disables all but a few areas that can wake a pc. You then set the benchmarks for the monitored areas and after a nominated period of time, if the measured performance falls below all of these benchmarks, Econap puts the pc to sleep.

 

 

 

Without any exaggeration, this piece of software has totally change how my server behaves. Seriously, it now sleeps like a baby. Absolutely nothing random wakes the pc now. I’m still tweaking the benchmarks a little for it to go to sleep, mainly the network setting, but it’s like 90% there. I said before I had it going to sleep good but not great, it's now great and I'm going for awesome. Econap keeps second by second logs that show which blockers are active and what they are reading, so using those logs to set benchmarks is a no-brainer, and then it can be fine tuned from there.

 

Free version monitors Audio, Ram, CPU, HDD, NIC, and Multi-User activity. It also has the ability to be directed to a program to say that if this program is running – do not sleep. There is a bit for running processes as well but that area still needs some work. Basically everything you need to get the pc to sleep.

 

Paid version (all of $12AUD) adds Controller, Printer Queue, Fullscreen Detection, and ability to manage all the wake up devices found on your pc.

 

I've paid for the software, but only because i have found it very useful and that's how I roll. You could easily just use the free version and be happy with it.

 

If you’ve struggled with your pc sleep, you could do a lot worse than giving this a go!!!

 

Cheers

Chris

Edited March 3, 2019 by Raptor6L

[Raptor6L 23]

Oops, forgot the disclaimer, no I'm not associated with the company or the software developers, nor do I receive any royalties, blah blah blah.

Just a happy camper figuring this might help some others out there.

 

Chris