Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/BruceEitman/archive/2014/06/24/wes-changing-power-settings-from-the-command-line.aspx
I am working on a kiosk type system right now – really, it
is a kiosk. So we want the user to feel
like the system is running all of the time, and the power settings to turn off
the display hinder that.
The settings are readily available in the control panel, but
that isn't very convenient. I want to
control them from batch file which would help remove the human error
problem. My first attempt was to start
the power control panel from the command line – at least this reminded me that
I needed to change the settings… To
start the power control panel applet, run “control /name microsoft.poweroptions”.
But it would be much better if I could change the
settings. They must be in the registry,
but I wasn't able to figure those out (see note at bottom).
Better though is the use of powercfg.exe which allows the settings to be
changed from the command line.
Running “powercfg /?” will show the many command line
options, but I only need to change settings for the current power scheme. So running “powercfg /? Change” will show
that the following are configurable:
- · monitor-timeout-ac
- · monitor-timeout-dc
- · disk-timeout-ac
- · disk-timeout-dc
- · standby-timeout-ac
- · standby-timeout-dc
- · hibernate-timeout-ac
- · hibernate-timeout-dc
I want to disable these which can be done by setting the timeout
to zero (0):
powercfg /change
monitor-timeout-ac 0
Doing that over and over in a batch file seems cumbersome,
so let’s read a list from a file and change the settings:
@echo off
set PowerListFile=powerlist.txt
FOR /F %%i in (%PowerListFile%) DO (
call :DisablePowerSetting
%%i
)
goto :EOF
:DisablePowerSetting
powercfg /change %1 0
goto :EOF
And powerlist.txt might contain:
monitor-timeout-ac
monitor-timeout-dc
disk-timeout-ac
disk-timeout-dc
standby-timeout-ac
standby-timeout-dc
hibernate-timeout-ac
hibernate-timeout-dc
NOTE: I was able to find a few registry settings for values not
controlled by powercfg. These are:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99\17aaa29b-8b43-4b94-aafe-35f64daaf1ee\DefaultPowerSchemeValues\381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e]
"DcSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"AcSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99\17aaa29b-8b43-4b94-aafe-35f64daaf1ee\DefaultPowerSchemeValues\8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c]
"DcSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"AcSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99\17aaa29b-8b43-4b94-aafe-35f64daaf1ee\DefaultPowerSchemeValues\a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a]
"DcSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"AcSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
