So, I decided to try digging into this a little further on my W7 pro workstation. I wasn't going to mess with the HTPC because, well, it's working fine right now. So, I grabbed another IR receiver I had (from this horrible remote
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6880101002 ) and plugged it into the front USB port on the machine in my sig (same mobo as my HTPC). I let it do its thing with installing drivers, etc. and then pushed the power button on the remote. As expected, it went to sleep without issue. I pushed the power button again... nothing. Hit the spacebar on my computer, powered up. I went digging in device manager and the Microsoft eHome transceiver listed there had no Power management tab exposed. I also found it under the Universal Serial Bus Controllers section listed as "eHome Infrared Transceiver (USBCIR)" and it did have a power management tab and "Allow this device to wake the computer" was already checked. So, I knew my USB could wake the computer (keyboard is usb) and I already had a checked tab, but no dice on wakeup via remote.
A little googling around and somehow I ended up on a dutch site and someone has taken the pains to make a tool appropriately named "MCE Standby Tool". So, I made sure my backup from last night was successful, then I downloaded and installed (for science!!). There was a somewhat confusing option at the beginning of the install about installing all the features or just configuring this machine.. I said Yes. After that I was greeted with an overwhelming number of options, some of which may affect my setup, but I just wanted to see if it fixed the issue at hand. I'm happy to report that it did!!
So, if you too have a current backup, have an issue with your MCE remote not waking your sleeping HTPC and want to experience some lovely Dutch programming, download it here:
http://www.degroeneknop.nl/forum/index. ... l#msg36286 and report back. I hope it fixes it for you like it did for me. Now to go look more closely at those options I said "yes" to...
EDIT: That link goes to the version I had success with. Apparently that's a bit out of date, there are updated stable and beta versions you can find here:
http://slicksolutions.eu/downloads.shtml#MST