Hibernation instead of shutdown in PowerChute Business Edition?

[whoups_apc]

I have a Smart-UPS SMT750I (750VA 230V) and have PowerChute Business Edition Agent installed (on Windows 7 Ultimate x64), and I wonder if there is a way to do hibernation instead of shutdown of Windows?

It seems possible in Personal Edition, but I can't find anything about it in Business Edition?

I guess I could create a script that executes shutdown /h and make PowerChute call it to "exit applications" before it shuts down Windows, but would that cause a state issue in PowerChute when later resuming from hibernation, i.e. that it thinks it's still in progress to shut down and does so when its timer expires? If so, it wouldn't work.

I need to hibernate for several reasons, one being software I use that refuses an automatic Windows shutdown (and I don't want to kill its process).

[whoups_apc]

So, I created a script that executes shutdown /h and set PowerChute to run the script before shutting down Windows, but unfortunately it was as I suspected: as soon as I wake the machine back up from hibernation, PowerChute detects that the timeout for shutdown has passed and immediately executes its shutdown. So hibernation unfortunately cannot be done using a script...

Another negative side-effect of using a script for hibernation is that PowerChute then won't tell the UPS to shut down (it obviously doesn't do that until it starts the Windows shutdown sequence, for understandable reasons), so the UPS keeps running until the battery goes dry (unless mains power returns).

I really hope an option to do hibernation instead of shutdown can be included in a future relase of PowerChute Business Edition Agent, or is there a way to do it that I've missed?

To name another reason why I need hibernation is that my machine (a server running 24/7 unless power goes out) is set to start up automatically when power comes back on, but that doesn't work when the machine has been gracefully shut down (a limitation in the motherboard BIOS). It works perfectly to wake up from hibernation, and that's what I need.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This is not officially supported but you can

1. stop APCPBEAgent server
2. open PowerChute Business Edition / agent / bin folder
3. rename shutdown.exe to shutdownsave
4. rename hibernate.exe to shutdown.exe
5. start APCPBEAgent service

PowerChute will now hibernate the OS instead of shutting it down.

[whoups_apc]

Ah, excellent! I just tried it and it worked, my server now hibernates and auto-restarts when mains power returns, exactly what I needed!

I did encounter a small but easily solved problem however: the pbeagent service is still running when the machine wakes up from hibernation, but its integrated web server is "dead" and no longer responds. A simple restart of the service fixes it, so all I really have to do is schedule an automatic restart of the service in Windows Task Scheduler, to run when Windows starts up.

It would of course be nice if it was possible to select hibernation in the agent ui so the little hack wasn't necessary, but I'm sure you have valid reasons not to do it (perhaps the issue with the web server going down), and it doesn't really matter as long as the hack works. 

[whoups_apc]

For completeness, here's what I did to automatically restart the PowerChute Agent service when resuming from hibernation:

1. Created a cmd script to perform the restart (and put it in C:\ to let UAC protect it from non-admin modifications):
   
   @echo off
   net stop APCPBEAgent
   net start APCPBEAgent
2. Created a task in Task Scheduler that executes the script when resuming from hibernation, by adding a trigger that fires when an event with ID 1 from the Power-Troubleshooter source pops up in the Windows event log (but note that it'll also fire when resuming from standby). Set it to run with highest privileges (this is required for the net command in the script) and pick a suitable user account for running it (I picked SYSTEM, or more specifically NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM).

Works like a charm!