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In Reply to: RE: WFP (Windows File Protection) disabling batch script- the 'really' easy way! posted by 60801 on September 17, 2013 at 06:44:04
You can minimize the cplay window for the monitor to minimize the effect. Also there were some posts by jack wrong who showed how to reset display colors to simulate a totally black screen. This also improved sonics by minimizing emi/ rfi.
Edits: 09/17/13Follow Ups:
Thanks for these pointers. It would be nice, though, if the screen blanked during inactivity and then woke-up at the touch of the mouse.
Thanks Theob and Andy222 for your positive feedback! I'll discuss a few of your comments below.
Andy, I've been looking into your 'screen always on' dilema. It started out as a rather mind-boggling problem. Even if I set power management to 'turn off monitor' after one minute, it stayed on all the time. At first I thought it may be to do with disabled services so I re-started a few (of what I thought might be) relevant ones back up again. No luck!Then I started looking at Device Manager and re-enabling some system devices, still no joy. Even in Windows XP mode the power management still would not turn off the display! I even tried sending commands to user32.dll and still the display remained lit.
I tried, on one of my spare PCs, a fresh XP build with no drivers installed and this is what I've discovered. It's all to do with us 'disabling' / not having display drivers installed for the graphics card in use. With no driver (or indeed with or without if the device is disabled) the system call to turn off the monitor is effectively ignored, Windows cannot communicate that command to the hardware.
So here are your options:
1. You could re-enable and re-install all the graphic card display drivers. Then set up power management to turn off the display on inactivity. Now, if you wanted a shorter timer, like say 10 seconds, I can find you a way of achieving this (usually one minute is the quickest time as an option). But the downside may be that the sound quality suffers by having the graphics devices installed? You'd have to test it and see?
2. Look into Jack Wong's method. I haven't seen these pages so have no idea what Mr Wong did. But if it was changing palate colours that may be a great solution, without adding any extra system load which may degrade sound?
3. I am in the process of writing a solution for you. I'd be interested if you wanted to try it. It will be an application that starts up when you boot and runs in the background. It will mainly wile away doing nothing so as (hopefully) not to add load. This will (every 1/4 of a second by default) look at the 'inactivity timer' in Windows (Kernel32.dll). After 10 seconds of inactivity the screen will appear to go black. What actually will happen is a window with a black background will cover you entire display so making it look like the screen has switched off. Bear in mind that the backlight will still actually be lit though as there seems no-way (without display drivers) of turning this off (I could write similar software to do this otherwise, or leave it to 'power management'). On moving mouse or touching keyboard display will re-appear as normal (for a key press, first press will make screen come on, 2nd will issue the command to cMP/CPlay).
Now the downside to no. 3. This may or may not effect sound quality with the program running, though it has been made to be low on resource use. Something you'd have to assess maybe? Last thing I'd want to do is upset the sound in any way! Maybe it won't?
If you want to give it a go, I'll make sure it will have a method of clean install/uninstall and it will activate in cMP mode, in XP mode will exit, as otherwise will drive you mad going blank so quickly when you're adjusting something! Of course 10 seconds is just an idea of how long I'd have it lit for, if it was for me. Could do it for any length of time you like, also the amount of 'inactivity checks' per second could be adjusted. Bear in mind that if it's not checking often, then when you move the mouse it may appear sluggish to bring the screen 'back to life'?
Theo, the 'disabling WFP' batch file could easily be modified to do the minlogon swap (though for licensing reasons the user would have to obtain 'minlogon' file as that can't be distributed legally by one of us). I could update this if you want? But the minlogon file would need placing in the same folder as the batch say (or in System32 folder as another example), then the script could be made to do the swap.
Andy, On your point of making automated cMP set-up scripts, the software I put together does do this but before releasing, I'd have to polish it up and make it more functional.
The problem is two parts:
1. A 'one item fits all' dilemma! Some people are using juli@, some USB dacs, some others ASIO sound cards etc. All these would need to be accommodated for. Some have system boards which blue screen if some devices are disabled, others are fine. Then there's the people who use networks, the people who don't etc. I think we could safely create something where it works with XP or nothing, so to speak. As it seems the general consensus that XP sounds better in a fully stripped down set-up?
2. Some of the files needed to achieve the results (e.g. the command utility that disables devices) are freely obtainable, but are Microsoft products, so cannot be directly distributed with the program / script files. These could though be maybe automatically downloaded by the setup software, assuming that user's pc is set up to access a network and the links to the items remained consistent. My cMP machine though was never put on the network, to keep it as clean as possible, so this would need to happen on another PC which was!
Anyway, both those points I think are pretty minor, and it would be good for something to automate the, let's face it, tedious process of all the Windows adjustments that need to be made. I think last time I did it manually, it took something like about 4 hours of grief lol.
Just a question too... Does anybody find that the sound of their setup goes off after a few days using cMP/CPlay (this includes re-booting / powering on / off over that period of time)? I find after about 5 days a rebuild / set-up 'freshens' the sound up again (starts sounding a bit loose in timing / grainy). May be my set-up, or something to do with using USB? Also, think my amps are needing a service desperately, so may all be to do with that? I'm using the AQVOX ASIO usb drivers. Not cheap, but they sound amazing! There's a free trial on their site for anyone who wants to give them a go (you just have to put up with it making an annoying 'beep' once every minute while in trial-mode, goes if you purchase license key).Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. I'm a bit of a hobbyist on the programming side, but find it so enjoyable none the less. Is the cMP2 project still 'open source' as I've never seen the source code to any of this? Wonder where you get it from? Looks like cics hasn't been posting here for a long time too... Still, his (or is it her?) legacy lives on! This forum and the cMP one is huge and still growing!
All the best,
Mark
Edits: 09/19/13 09/19/13 09/19/13 09/19/13
Thanks for the explanation for the monitor not turning off. I am slightly reluctant to get the facility back by re-enabling the display drivers because I fear for the sonic impact. Minimising cPLAY and playing with the palate colours is an option, as Theob has highlighted, but a big problem for me is that minimising only works once following the launch of a file. Once the window is maximised again (to take a quick peek at the track listing, perhaps) it stays that way until the file is closed and re-opened.
Your possible solution sounds pretty interesting and I’ll be more than happy to try it. Just as soon as you’re ready.
I fully appreciate the difficulty that differing hardware poses for automated set-up scripts. I myself have deviated a little from the “classic” cMP hardware. I started with the juli@ sound card, but I’ve moved across to asynchronous USB because I thought it sounded a little nicer.
If you do get around to producing some scripts, please count me in as a willing body for trials.
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