PTE controls Power Management

[Guest Dick Le Bleu]

Perhaps another ATI anomaly?

I use Power management to turn off my screen after a period of time of inactivity. Usually 20 minutes, but after coming home and finding my screen still on I decided to do some testing.

ATI All in Wonder 7500, XP SP2.

I set the power management to turn off after one minute. Right.

I then run a short slideshow created with 5.1 RC4. It's about 4 minutes. Slideshow plays with no interruption expected at the 1 min mark. After the show completes, power management turns off the screen for about a second, and then turns it back on!

I created the same slideshow with 5.04 and the same results.

Plays fine for the 4 minute duration then screen shuts off at the one minute mark, but comes on again after about a second!

Had a look at some other slideshows made with earlier versions. In particular, Beckham's Ireland, probably made with 4.4?

Slide show began as usual, and the screen went blank after one minute of the show! I expect PTE was modified to avoid this behaviour! But after the show was complete, the screen went blank after one minute, and stayed blank.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Dick

[nobeefstu]

Dick ,

After the show completes, power management turns off the screen for about a second, and then turns it back on!

I suspect the effect you see has nothing to do with your Power Management. PTE Shows built using Full Screen w/D3D uses the 3D accelerated capabilites of your video card/drivers. The effect of that " for about a second " is created when the desktop no longer uses the D3D mode drivers and reverts back to your normal desktop mode drivers at the closing/end of the PTE show. Many members also refer to this effect a momentary flash or flicker. PC gamers also experience this same desktop effect when the games closes that use 3D acceleration.

Only v5.0 and newer PTE D3D shows will display this effect ... previous PTE versions did not use the D3D capabilities of the video card.

As a Test:

Build 2 shows ... one with the D3D checkbox enabled and one without. View the results. The non D3D will not produce your screen effect as described in your above post.

[fh1805]

Hi Dick,

Coming home and finding your screen still powered up simply indicates that whilst you were out some kind of automated background task was activated. This is perfectly normal behaviour for a PC system.

When Beckham's Ireland show was running and the screen went blank after one minute, this too was normal PC behaviour given the settings that you had on it. The time intervals you set for things like screen-savers activation or power-state change are time intervals since last keyboard or mouse interaction. When a PTE sequence is running there are, usually, no interactions from either the keyboard or the mouse. Therefore the power-state will change, in your specific case, after one minute.

[Guest Dick Le Bleu]

Dick ,

I suspect the effect you see has nothing to do with your Power Management.

Only v5.0 and newer PTE D3D shows will display this effect ... previous PTE versions did not use the D3D capabilities of the video card.

As a Test:

Build 2 shows ... one with the D3D checkbox enabled and one without. View the results. The non D3D will not produce your screen effect as described in your above post.

Thanks for giving me an avenue to explore.

You are perfectly right. With the D3D disabled, the slide show was indeed interrupted by the forced power management shutdown. So your assessment of the situation was correct.

But after the slideshow ends, even with D3D disabled, I still get the same behaviour - After the test one minute timeout in power management, the screen shuts down as setup, and four seconds later, the screen comes back on, and stays on until the next one minute test timeout, and the cycle repeats. So something appears to simulate mouse or keyboard action on my part.

This behaviour happens with PTE with or without D3D activated.

I tried disabling all ATI running programs and services to see if they were causing the problem, but to no avail.

You are probably right that this has nothing to do with PTE, but it is the only program so far that appears to disable screen shutdown after the power management timeout.

No big problem now that I know it is happening, because is simple reset of the timeout in power management restores normal screen shutdown behaviour.

Dick

[Igor]

Dick,

It seem to be a bug of ATI Radeon 7500 video card, but likely we have this video at our office. We reproduced this problem and found solution.

Please download this updated version:

http://www.wnsoft.com/apr/apr-deluxe_beta.zip (4 MB)

[Guest Dick Le Bleu]

Dick,

It seem to be a bug of ATI Radeon 7500 video card, but likely we have this video at our office. We reproduced this problem and found solution.

Please download this updated version:

http://www.wnsoft.com/apr/apr-deluxe_beta.zip (4 MB)

Thanks for the quick response!

This new version worked well with D3D off. After running the slideshow, the screen turned off after the 1 minute power management test setting as it should. But with D3D on, the screen went grey (not black or off) after the 1 minute test period and returned after approximately 4 seconds.

Dick

[Igor]

Strange. On our ATI 7500 it helped in both modes.

Because it is a bug of this video card, we can't do more. Sorry.

[Guest Dick Le Bleu]

Strange. On our ATI 7500 it helped in both modes.

Because it is a bug of this video card, we can't do more. Sorry.

Thanks very much for trying! There could be all kinds of reasons why it does not work here... I will try eliminating running programs one at a time to see if I can track it down...

Thanks again,

Dick