BleepingComputer.com: Command Or Setting To Force Monitor To Turn On?

Hi all,

I also have this posted over at the MS Windows XP newsgroups, but not much luck there so far.

Not an urgent problem by any means, just an academic question/loose end to tie up.

I have two scheduled tasks for power management purposes: One to have wizmo force the computer to standby at 10 pm, the other to start Internet Explorer at 6:15 am to wake the computer from standby.

Both tasks work fine, but upon wakeup, the monitor doesn't turn on. I have to move the mouse to wake up the monitor.

Obviously, since I have to move the mouse anyway, this isn't really a problem at all. It's more of a discussion question/exercise in Windows management:

Is there a command I can run at the command line to force the monitor to turn on? That way I could put the IE startup and the monitor turn-on command in a batch file and run that at 6:15. If not, is there some setting somewhere that will ensure the monitor wakes up when the computer does?

One person at the XP newsgroups suggested scheduling another task after the IE start/computer wakeup task, such as a command line ping to localhost. I did try this but no luck; the monitor still refused to turn on when I ran the ping cmd file as a scheduled task.

Any other ideas are welcome. Thanks!

Short of leaving the monitor on all the time, I don't believe that Windows has this ability. Maybe a driver for the monitor would have this feature (I don't know as I don't use any special monitor drivers)?

Thanks for the quick reply John. Sorry if I didn't explain well enough. I don't mean turning the monitor on and off physically; the monitor stays on. But when the computer goes into standby, the monitor also goes into its own "standby"; the green power light turns amber, so it's still on, but just not receiving signals from the computer. When I said turn on the monitor, I meant having Windows send output to the monitor so that it also "wakes up" and displays data instead of a dark screen.

After reading your response, I performed a quick experiment: I clicked Start > Turn Off Computer > Standby. The computer powered down to standby, computer power LED flashing, monitor dark, monitor power LED amber instead of green. I then pressed the power button to wake up the computer. The computer came out of standby, and it also started sending output to the monitor; the dark screen lit up with Internet Explorer and the power LED went from amber (standby) to green (getting signals from Windows).

So, there's something about mouse movement and the manual wakeup from standby I did above that tells Windows to send signals to the monitor. Waking the computer from standby by scheduling a task wakes the computer, but it doesn't seem to tell Windows to send output to the monitor like mouse movement or pressing the power button does.

So I guess a better way to state my question is :"Is there a way to force Windows to send signals to the monitor through the command line or a scheduled task?"

Edited to add last paragraph above.

This post has been edited by Doonhamer: 16 August 2008 - 04:31 PM

My searches on the web tend to support the theory that some movement is required to do this (and that was by design).
Have you tried a macro in a program such as Word to type a couple of letters?
Otherwise, I'd suspect that it was a setting that's controlled by the monitor drivers - and that's why I suggested installing the drivers for your monitor to see if they have a setting for that.

Thanks again John.

That required physical movement either of the mouse or the keyboard might be built in by design gives me pause. Over at the XP newsgroups, I've been working with someone who's suggested issuing "keystrokes": in a batch file, I call a vbs script that opens Task Manager, then ten seconds later issues an "Alt+F4" keystroke to close Task Manager. The script runs and opens and closes Task Manager just fine, but it does not wake the monitor as it does so.

I'll share this at the XP newsgroup. Perhaps this non-problem has a non-solution.



Edited to fix deformed smiley.

Edited again for spelling and readability.

This post has been edited by Doonhamer: 16 August 2008 - 08:21 PM

Never used this program, only providing a link for you.
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/0...nd-hibernation/

raw, on Aug 16 2008, 07:59 PM, said:

Cheers Raw. I gave this program a shot as it had specific options to turn on the monitor and repair internet connection, but I fared even worse, as, after it woke up the computer, I couldn't get the screen to turn on at all, even with mouse movement/clicks and physical keystrokes, and had to hard-restart the system.

Would be the perfect solution if it worked on my system! However, the creator disclaims that it works on almost all Windows XP environments or some such.

Hi - I was just trawling the net to find a solution when I came upon your earlier problem of the same nature. Did you ever cure it ? If not I think I may have the answer. I have written a script using Autohotkeys which just clicks the mouse at two slightly different positions on the screen and then exits. I have tried this twice on a very short stand-by time and each time it has worked. next step is to try it out overnight and see if that works as well. I have listed the bits of the script that you would require just in case you want them.


script list


; set time var seconds = 1000 milliseconds
seconds:= 1000
minutes:= 60*seconds


sleep, 10*seconds

; first mouse position
click 1,1

;second mouse position
click 10,1

; end script
exit


You probably know but Autohotkeys is a free program available from Cnet download site on http://www.download.com


hope this is of use to you and anyone else looking for a solution

Cheers

fenacre

Hi again - although it seemed to work on a short (2-3 minute) stand-by it didn't allow the monitor to display when the computer was woken by a scheduled task the following morning. Next step is to run it via WOSB program to wake computer up. will post again if it works.

cheers