Monday, April 26th, 2010
Vgasys and Sleep Mode
Something obscure worth feeding to the internets – converting a pc system from headed (with a video card/display) to headless by removing the display AND video card to save on power can have some strange effects on your system. For one thing this will enable the default vgasys video driver within windows. On older systems (Windows Server 2003 and potentially XP) this vga driver is not ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) compliant. When windows loads this driver, it can prevent you from placing the computer into sleep mode.
For Windows Home Server users - if you’re running Lights Out and you suddenly find the ’suspend state’ missing from the post-backup options, and you’ve been messing with video drivers, check to make sure the currently loaded driver supports ACPI. You can do this by opening a cmd window via Remote Desktop and typing ‘powercfg /availablesleepstates’.
I’ve been messing with WHS on my old dell XPS 210 after a recent upgrade to a newer four core Dell system (sweetness) for development work. I should have a review out here in a bit. I really wanted to give WHS a spin before plunking down $ on a pre-built system. All-in-all, the backups and file/media sharing worked great out of the box. (I do have some gripes though, power management is one of them.) I’ll post about the experience down the road. My personal suggestion would be not to build one on your own, buy one of the headless preconfigured systems out there. (Windows Server 2003 driver issues with my dell system were my biggest frustration.) Better yet, wait a year until the new Win7 based ‘Vail’ systems come out, which is what I’m planning on doing.
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