Schedule Power Saving

[bongoman]

Hi WD,

I need some ideas on how to schedule power saving features in win xp for the monitor. I'm trying to get xp to turn off monitor at a particular time then turn them on again at another time.
I need to achieve this without third party applications. Any suggestions??

[CCT]

Just use your Power Management settings in Control Panel.

Basically, shuts the monitor down (standby mode) if idle for a preset time and it stays that way until you click the mouse or press a keyboard key.

[NooNoo]

Do you mean turn the monitor on at say 8.30am and then turn it off at say 4.30pm? The easiest thing for that is a timer switch on the plug.

You can use bios to wake the computer from standby or you can schedule a shutdown (standby) operation using the XP scheduler.

[bongoman]

Thanks for the ideas guys but i have to do this with about 70 monitors and the switch idea is not practical. I need to turn them off at midnite and have them back on 5am. Isn't there any reg settings I can change? say run a reg key using scheduler to turn off then another scheduler to turn on again?? the machines dont turn off

[NooNoo]

Not just the monitor. Why can't the monitor just go blank? Do you have people working to midnight?
Can't you have the entire machine go into sleep/standby?

[bongoman]

The goal is to save on power/electricity, so just going blank won't work. Also the monitors are for display purposes only thus no keyboard or mouse are attached to them. The whole machine can go into sleep/standby, but then how do i wake them up? thanks for the ideas

[NooNoo]

Waking them is easy - you set the time in bios.

Or you can have them wake up by battering the keyboard - also available in bios.

Are your users incapable of using the power switch on the monitor when they leave or when they return?

[bongoman]

The monitors are used for display purposes ONLY, no keyboard or mouse are attached to the PCs driving the monitors. Thus no users interact with the monitors (no one to turn them off).
I checked the bios settings on the pc and I can set a time to power on (hh:mm:ss) but not to power off, only after a set time which won't work for my situation.
Now, how do I do a power off in windows? schedule shutdown-s command?
this one seems close to resolution. Thanks again for the ideas

[NooNoo]

Power off is achieved by running a scheduled task for shutdown.exe.