Good morning...

I am at a stage with my vista install to explore the power setings.

Ass uch I scheduled a recording at about 2 am this morning and went to bed puting the PC into sleep mode (I think ) .

When I woke up, my PC would not comeback to live using the mouse and keyboard, a powerbutton press was required.

Also there were no recordings made.

So what settings are people leaving their PC/VMC in?

I would like to reduce power consumption, but also gurrantedd recordings are made.

Also what if I were to log off?  On my XP box it will record whilst the PC is on but no one logged on.

Any suggestiosn?

Adrian

Personally, I don't use any sleep settings for my main Media Center... I was using sleep, but it was causing problems so I changed the power settings to always be on.  To me a happy wife is much more important than saving a few $ on the electric bill (and it means I will be able to continue getting new gadgets).  I will probably explore the sleep options again at some point in the future, but not until everything else is working perfectly (much easier to just rule this out as a cause of any problems).

That said, if you want to start exploring sleep options, make sure you have the latest bios updates for your motherboard - many boards have had updates that fix issues with sleep (and resuming from sleep) with Vista.  Also make sure that you have the latest video card drivers - this can help a great deal as well.

When working properly, the computer should be able to wake itself to do recordings, it also shouldn't matter if you are logged in or not.

Windows media center will wake up and record TV - even if it is in hibernation mode. I have my system set to standby - and it wakes up the unit 5 mins before the recording no problem... records and then goes back into standby.   Handy for overnight and your carbon footprint!

You may have figured out your problem already, but here's my two cents...

I have had this exact problem in the last few weeks (sleeping media center won't wake up).  There are two things I would recommend. 

1) Roll back your updates to the last time sleep worked appropriately.  You can do this via a system restore.  

2) Turn off any software NOT related to media center.  From the start menu, type msconfig, hit enter.  Once you do this, go to Services, check Hide all microsoft services, then click disable all.  Now, go to startup and click disable all.  Save, reboot and see if that fixes your problem.  Then, you can go back into msconfig and add things back one thing at a time and see who the offending party is.

Hope this helps!

Chris