Windows 7 Media Center waking up by itself in the middle of the night??? - Solution

Is your Windows 7 Media Center an insomniac?

Mine was, I'd wake up in the morning to find that it had woken from it's slumber. Concerned about why it was waking up, and the power it was consuming being awake in the middle of the night, i decided to sort out what was going on. Here's a couple of little tips you can try if you've got the same problem.

1. Find out what last woke your machine.
If you go to start -> search for "cmd" -> cmd it'll open up the command promt. Running the command powercfg -lastwake will show you what process woke up your computer.

2. Disable Media Center checking for updates.
By default, media center will wake up and check for updates at 3am every night. You can turn it off, or change the time, by doing the following:
In Media Center for to Tasks -> Settings -> Automatic Download Options
Now edit them according to how you want them.

3. Disable the Media Center screensaver.
Now the Windows 7 screensaver and the Media Center screensaver are 2 seperate things. Disabling one won't disable the other, so you should go ahead and manually disable the MCE screensaver. Do this by going to Tasks -> Settings -> Pictures -> Slideshow Screensaver and disabling the screensaver.


If you've got an insomniac Media Center, give those little tips a whirl and see how it goes.

el :)