[Added to Roadmap] Add new remote "Power" button for PC Shutdown

[Pauven]

I could be wrong, but I'm thinking that the 'Sleep' button does whatever you have Windows configured to do with the Power button. I think you should try it.

It might also be that you need to configure the Sleep button action, instead of 'Do nothing'. I've seen it before where buttons are reversed, so it might be that in mapper Shutdown = Sleep button action, and Sleep = Shutdown button action.

CTRL+ALT+4? Is that a stock shortcut, or is that one you linked to a hotkey/shortcut to run a custom action?

For the most part I have found the stock button mappings work well for most functions, including power. I'm not opposed to doing something with the power button, but I don't like the approach of creating a custom shutdown script and hotkey. I think we need a better understanding of how to get the NUC to behave correctly using standard Windows functionality.

[Jamie]

Okay, Paul.

I got the advanced mapper to work without the shortcut. I programmed the power button option under system for Sleep like you have it. I then programmed the advanced MCE mapper power button to it's default setting of sleep. That worked for sleep, I then changed the default mapper power button setting to shutdown. That worked.

My problem with CMC now is that the default setting is sleep for the power button and I can't seem to force it to use shutdown instead. I tried to trick it by deleting the backup settings in the registry and hoping that it would steal the value from the one I set in advanced mapper. CMC will have no part in doing that, so I am stuck with advanced MCE Mapper for now for the sake of one lousy button

If you could add the functionality for the power button to be set to either sleep, or shutdown, per user choice that would be great.

The sleep function is really hard to recover from in windows 10 especially with a remote. Windows 10 tries to force me to create a pin on restart and I really do not want to do it.

I can really see how someone can get pretty irritated testing this stuff. You have to remember to go in both programs as an administrator and it seems that rebooting takes longer and longer each time. It gets even more irritating when your CMC changes did not take affect because you weren't an administrator when you thought you were. I started this a 10 a.m. this morning and now I have my results on what I think I need to go forward with regarding CMC's remote settings.

Anything you can do to fix this would be great.

Jamie

[Pauven]

Hey Jamie, I've read your post a few times, and I'm still unclear on exactly what worked, what is still broken, and what you want CMC to do.

I think you wrote that by changing MCE Mapper Power button action to Sleep, and by configuring the Windows Sleep button action, that pressing the Power button now worked. I'm guessing that your machine went to Sleep?

You then said you changed MCE Mapper Power button action back to Shutdown, and that worked too, where before it did not work? So what did it do, Sleep or Shutdown? And what was the fix that allowed this now to work?

The issue you're having with CMC is that when you apply the button config, it is going to a backup copy of the registry which somehow has Sleep not Shutdown configured for the Power button, and keeps reverting your MCE Mapper change. If that's the case, then deleting the registry backup should have solved that issue, so long as you follow this order:

1) Delete backup in registry
2) Configure with MCE Mapper
3) Reboot
4) Optional: Verify button behavior/MCE Mapper config is Shutdown
5) Now configure with CMC

If you could add the functionality for the power button to be set to either sleep, or shutdown, per user choice that would be great.

So you want the ability to configure the Power button in CMC to either do Sleep or Shutdown (and not the CTRL+ALT+9 hotkey or CTRL+ALT+4 hotkey). I think that should be doable. My one bit of confusion here is - Shutdown was your original config, and it didn't work, but now it works? What was the fix?

It seems a little bit odd to me that you're wanting a feature in CMC to set a value to what it was originally before this whole tweaking and testing process started. I get your point, it would be nice to have a way to configure it in CMC, and I agree. But what has my head spinning a bit is that you're essentially asking for a way to undo the config change.

The sleep function is really hard to recover from in windows 10 especially with a remote. Windows 10 tries to force me to create a pin on restart and I really do not want to do it.

One of the great things about not having My Movies installed on my HTPC, is that I don't need a password. So I can get through the wake-up prompts by just hitting OK a couple times (would really love to turn off the lock screen/user screen altogether if possible). I don't know what you mean by being prompted for a PIN. Perhaps you have a Microsoft online account? I made sure I kept my account local/offline only.



I think my really big take-away here is that using the CMC created MCE Remote config backup as a baseline for config changes is a poor design solution. This is something I've realized for a while, and had hoped to fix in v2.2 but ran out of time. My idea is to make the whole process more powerful with options to create/restore backups as necessary, restore to Windows default, and to apply config changes on top of the current config rather than using the backup as the baseline.

If I make those changes, plus add in the ability to configure the Power button, then that would allow you to retire using MCE Remote Mapper.

While I'm taking notes, does anyone have any suggestions or requests to add?

[Jamie]

I think you wrote that by changing MCE Mapper Power button action to Sleep, and by configuring the Windows Sleep button action, that pressing the Power button now worked. I'm guessing that your machine went to Sleep?

Yes, I think fixing the Windows Sleep button action did the trick. After fixing the windows Sleep button action, The MCE Mapper power button sleep command/key worked. Before it didn't.

You then said you changed MCE Mapper Power button action back to Shutdown, and that worked too, where before it did not work? So what did it do, Sleep or Shutdown? And what was the fix that allowed this now to work?

Yes, I noticed that the mapper power button shutdown command/key worked too. It shutdown the PC like I wanted. Sleep causes it to sleep and shutdown causes it to shutdown. I tried to use these commands before configuring the Windows Sleep button action but they would not work. They did nothing. I guess you must have both the Windows Sleep button action and the Windows shutdown button action configured in order to get the mapper power button commands/keys to work.

here are my current mapper power button setting. Power button highlighted in blue.

powerbutton.jpg (494.05 KiB) Viewed 14425 times

Here are my current sleep and shutdown action settings.

system pwer actions.jpg (130.08 KiB) Viewed 14425 times

The issue you're having with CMC is that when you apply the button config, it is going to a backup copy of the registry which somehow has Sleep not Shutdown configured for the Power button, and keeps reverting your MCE Mapper change. If that's the case, then deleting the registry backup should have solved that issue, so long as you follow this order:

1) Delete backup in registry
2) Configure with MCE Mapper
3) Reboot
4) Optional: Verify button behavior/MCE Mapper config is Shutdown
5) Now configure with CMC.

I will try this later today.

So you want the ability to configure the Power button in CMC to either do Sleep or Shutdown (and not the CTRL+ALT+9 hotkey or CTRL+ALT+4 hotkey). I think that should be doable.

Yes, there may be others who want their computer to sleep. I just want it to shutdown. As I stated above these commands work now. Somehow configuring the Windows Sleep button action to match what you have for both shutdown and sleep works for my PCs. I no longer need the shortcut.

Just the option to use shutdown command/key for the power button is all I need. As I stated yesterday the default for the mapper is sleep so I think the MCE power button default is sleep.

It seems a little bit odd to me that you're wanting a feature in CMC to set a value to what it was originally before this whole tweaking and testing process started. I get your point, it would be nice to have a way to configure it in CMC, and I agree. But what has my head spinning a bit is that you're essentially asking for a way to undo the config change.

My head was spinning when I wrote this up last night from working on this all day.

I just verified and tested my remote settings today and they are still working.

I'm not asking you to fix my config changes.

I'm asking for an option to configure the power button to allow me to shutdown my PC through the CMC remote settings. The default is sleep I believe. I think others might want to configure the power button to sleep if they so desire. If we had used my shortcut method, it would have not allowed others to put their PC to sleep. Now I think we have the best two options giving each user a choice.

The sleep function is really hard to recover from in windows 10 especially with a remote. Windows 10 tries to force me to create a pin on restart and I really do not want to do it.

One of the great things about not having My Movies installed on my HTPC, is that I don't need a password. So I can get through the wake-up prompts by just hitting OK a couple times (would really love to turn off the lock screen/user screen altogether if possible). I don't know what you mean by being prompted for a PIN. Perhaps you have a Microsoft online account? I made sure I kept my account local/offline only.

I use my windows pw to log into my nuc PC and I have autologin turned on for my NUCS. When windows wakes up from sleep it nags me to use a pin rather than a pw. It refuses to let me quit of this nag screen, so I have to power off my NUC and restart.

I think my really big take-away here is that using the CMC created MCE Remote config backup as a baseline for config changes is a poor design solution. This is something I've realized for a while, and had hoped to fix in v2.2 but ran out of time. My idea is to make the whole process more powerful with options to create/restore backups as necessary, restore to Windows default, and to apply config changes on top of the current config rather than using the backup as the baseline.

If I make those changes, plus add in the ability to configure the Power button, then that would allow you to retire using MCE Remote Mapper.

While I'm taking notes, does anyone have any suggestions or requests to add?

I agree. That would be great.

[Jamie]

The issue you're having with CMC is that when you apply the button config, it is going to a backup copy of the registry which somehow has Sleep not Shutdown configured for the Power button, and keeps reverting your MCE Mapper change. If that's the case, then deleting the registry backup should have solved that issue, so long as you follow this order:

1) Delete backup in registry
2) Configure with MCE Mapper
3) Reboot
4) Optional: Verify button behavior/MCE Mapper config is Shutdown
5) Now configure with CMC

Hi Paul, I used this method to set the CMC remote buttons and it did keep the setting I entered through the mapper to have the power button shutdown my PC. Everything is now the way I want it until a MS windows 10 feature update erases my remote settings.

Thanks

Jamie

[Pauven]

Everything is now the way I want it until a MS windows 10 feature update erases my remote settings.

Even then, I think you'll be okay. The backup that CMC created will be used as a baseline for future updates to the registry. That means when Microsoft wipes out your remote config, using CMC to update the registry will return it to the exact working state it is right now. It's one of the few benefits of the current design, you can get back to this point extremely easily.

[Jamie]

Good to know.

[Pauven]

I use my windows pw to log into my nuc PC and I have autologin turned on for my NUCS. When windows wakes up from sleep it nags me to use a pin rather than a pw. It refuses to let me quit of this nag screen, so I have to power off my NUC and restart.

On my HTPC without a password, resuming from Sleep shows me 2 screens, the Lock screen, and the Login screen. Neither of these show on a boot, only on resuming from Sleep. I can press OK to get through them, but I want to make them go away. So I'm looking into methods for this. I'm also thinking I can add a function in CMC to automate these fixes.

I don't know if you've tried any of these methods before, so I would appreciate your feedback on whether this really works:

disable-sign-in-screen-when-you-wake-your-windows-10-device

how-disable-windows-10-lock-screen

[Jamie]

I use my windows pw to log into my nuc PC and I have autologin turned on for my NUCS. When windows wakes up from sleep it nags me to use a pin rather than a pw. It refuses to let me quit of this nag screen, so I have to power off my NUC and restart.

On my HTPC without a password, resuming from Sleep shows me 2 screens, the Lock screen, and the Login screen. Neither of these show on a boot, only on resuming from Sleep. I can press OK to get through them, but I want to make them go away. So I'm looking into methods for this. I'm also thinking I can add a function in CMC to automate these fixes.

I don't know if you've tried any of these methods before, so I would appreciate your feedback on whether this really works:

disable-sign-in-screen-when-you-wake-your-windows-10-device

how-disable-windows-10-lock-screen

Hi Paul,

I followed the instructions in this url and the instructions worked. I was able to wake up my NUC from sleep without the lock screen, or pw being needed. I have windows 10 Pro 1903

disable-sign-in-screen-when-you-wake-your-windows-10-device


Disable Sign-In Password Prompt When You Resume from Sleep in Windows 10
Open Start > Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options.

Click in the Require sign-in list box then choose Never.


To disable lock screen I also did this


Go to Start > Settings > Personalization > Lock screen and toggle off Show lock screen background picture on the sign-in-screen.

As I said yesterday I setup auotlogin by doing this.

If you want to take it a step further, you can disable the password on startup, but again, this significantly increases the chances for unauthorized individuals getting into your computer.


Press Windows key + R

Type: control userpasswords2

Hit Enter.

Uncheck Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer. Click Apply then OK to confirm changes.

[Pauven]

Excellent, thank you for the quick testing turnaround.

Question: What is the benefit of having a password and enabling auto-login bypassing the password, versus simply having no password at all.

My HTPC is a dedicated machine, for watching movies, TV, and gaming. Nothing else. I see no need for a password on this type of device, just like I don't have a password on an Xbox or PlayStation or a Blu-ray player. Adding a password, only to then bypass it, seems an odd choice that I don't understand.