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Old 06-20-2013, 08:08 AM   #5
cybmole
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UPDATE _ SUCCESS

I finally diagnosed this after about 3 days of intermittent OCD on the topic.

turns out it was my TEAC A-H01S amplifier which is using a USB connection to PC, and when that is on, it must be continually polling . so the windows internal value "time since last user input" never escapes from zero

i got to that only because google found a MCE standby utility ( freeware ) program - previously I'd not heard of that "time since..." counter, but the utility displays it. so I was able turn things off until the counter becan incrementing.

Phew...
the utility is here, in case anyone else stumbles across this thread:

http://slicksolutions.eu/

I'd been racking my brains for what the cause could be - I'd changed a graphics card & spent ages suspecting that, and I'd uninstalled a lot of stuff prior to making a disc image security backup, but an audio amplifier never made it onto the "persons of interest list.
previously I@d been leaving the amp mostly off, as it has an annoyingly bring poerlight, but then I decide to just cover the light & leave it always on- as it's standby power consumption is minimal, and because hte USB connection gets screwed up if you forget to turn the amp on until midway through audio playback. It has to be turn on when there is no active audio source. great sound though & It totally filters out the background noise from EMF / scrolling within browsers/mouse movements that I could never previously totally eliminate. I can crank this up to 100% & its totally silent whereas with a sound card or an onboard audio, my PC would sound like a HAM radio-fest if pumped thru full-on100w hi-fi amp.
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