MCE Standby Tool

All recent PCs have the ability to enter low-power states like standby (S1/S3), hibernate (S4) and Away mode. When put in such a state some parts of the system are disabled or running in energy saving mode.

The system will consume far less energy compared to the full operation mode, in some situations just as little or hardly more than when switched off. When needed it can return to full operation mode in just a few seconds.

Running such a low-power state depends heavily on a proper cooperation between the systems hardware, operating system, device drivers and installed applications. Quite often this does not work properly out of the box. The MCE Standby Tool can be very helpfull when it comes to resolving this kind of issues.

Originally the MCE Standby application was designed to solve a number of standby issues that occurred on the Windows XP Media Center Edition. This was accomplished by properly configuring the system and actively supporting the sleep transitions.

By selecting the desired sleep state MST will make all the required power management settings, even some which are normally inaccessible.

The tool also has a number of active features that will help a system handle the power transitions properly. Automatic periodic reboots, closing and restarting of the media center applications and media center idleness detection are just a few examples.

Thousands of users from all over the world are using MST by now. The problems MST solved are quite a few. The following list is just a selection of the problems on which MST might be helpful: - Not properly going into and out of standby. - Unable to use the right sleep state (fans keep running). - Not going back to standby after a scheduled recording or guide update. - Not (reliably) waking for a scheduled recording. - Unable to wake from S3 standby using remote. - Unable to put the system standby by remote. - Hardware drivers preventing entering standby. - Black screen of death on resume from standby. - Blank screen requiring a button press on resume from standby. - Problematic USB devices at resume.