Great question - you have opened up a whole new can of worms here.

For everyone else reading, Remote Desktop is a feature in Windows that allows you to login to a computer from across a network, such as the internet. This computer would of course, need to be pre-configured for security reasons in order to make this possible. A common example of this is to login to your work computer from your home computer.

Back on topic - Remote Desktop should remain active by default. However, if either computer goes into standby, hibernation, or sleep mode, you will lose the connection. If the connection is disconnected, the computer on the other end should remain “logged in” and active by default - therefore the macro ’should’ continue to run. But again if it goes to sleep, you are out of luck. So the morale of the story is to disable the sleep mode on both machines in question. Then you can “sleep” soundly while your macros run, without fear that your computer(s) will sleep too!

Regards,
Colin.

What can I say - Thanks man!

Best Regards,
Colin.

Thank you for the information. Here is my situation: for work each mornng I wake up early (04:00) and remote into my work desktop from my laptop at home to kick off an Access macro. The queries can take up to an hour and a half to run. I would like to leave it run and go back to sleep but don’t because I fear I will lose all connections and it won’t complete. What exactly is happening in this scenario? Will the macro complete even though the desktop standsby/hibernates or sleeps? Will I lose my remote connection should my laptop standby/hibernate/sleep. Will losing the remote connection make a difference to what is happening on the desktop at work? Thanks so much.

Unfortunately no. Sleep was a feature introduced with Windows Vista. Windows XP can standby or hibernate, but there is no sleep feature. All this means is that if the laptop is set to standby, and is left for weeks in this state, the battery life may finally expire and the computer will shut down. Any unsaved work will be lost. This is, of course a very rare situation however. So its not a huge loss not having the sleep feature in XP. Hope this answers the question.

Regards,
Colin.

You are very welcome sir. Come back anytime!

Regards,
Colin.

I appreciate the question. Perhaps it is beyond my technical knowledge, as I have no experience with Verizon’s Fiber Optic Service.

My assumption is that standby would still be your best bet when factoring security & green-thinking into the equation. How could your data be stolen if your hard drive is not spinning and computer basically “off”? I’m curious as to what makes your internet connection any different.

As for the email problem, I can lend the following 2 pieces of advice:

1) Increase the size of the mailbox on your server! There is no reason that it should become full with todays cheap cost of storage. Heck, even just use a gmail account (free) if your current provider gives you a hard time about it.

or

2) As I mentioned to Andy, turn your monitor (and speakers, printers, etc.) off and set your hard drive to turn off after 20 minutes or so. That way your computer will still receive emails while reducing the power consumption compared to normal operation. Beyond that, I have no experience with waking a computer from standby when an incoming email arrives.

All the best,
Colin.

Thanks for the compliment, please come back again.

As I mentioned to Gayle, the computer can shut down the wireless adapter while in standby mode. This can be set in device manager & power options. These settings are not always reliable however, and vary by wireless adapter manufacturer.

There is no security risk while the laptop is in standby, even if the wireless adapter lights are flashing - the computer is essentially “off”.

Regards,
Colin.