Vista Auto Sleep?

Darius Black

I've been using the Kill Winamp app for years to automatically turn off my computer during the night or when I'm at work after it completes a defrag or download. But with Vista, I've taken to using the new sleep feature (where it lets you start up the computer in seconds rather than minutes), and I really like it. I was wondering if there's a way to make Vista go auto sleep with a countdown, or if there's a program that lets you do that. Anyone know about such a thing?

Azio

the new sleep feature

This "feature" is hardly new, and has been standard on Windows machines for at least 10 years.

As for your question, you could go to Task Scheduler and set it up to run the command: "rundll32 powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState" at a fixed time. You can go to Power Options in the control panel and have it sleep after a period of inactivity. If you want a countdown there are literally dozens of little executables out there that can do this for you. I trust you know how to use Google.

Darius Black

I had the impression that the Vista sleep feature is different from the older one in that it almost completely powers down your PC, kind of like hibernate does, but it take a fraction of the time to start back up. From what I remember, the WinXP sleep function still left my PC running, or at least the basic parts of it.

Anyway, I only posted after searching Google and finding nothing. I'm not looking for a generic shutdown app, but something that will actually use the sleep function. I'll see if the power options thing works, thanks.

Bama

I just want the little power icon in the start menu to actually shut the thing off.

wunderbar

Darius Black wrote: »

I had the impression that the Vista sleep feature is different from the older one in that it almost completely powers down your PC, kind of like hibernate does, but it take a fraction of the time to start back up. From what I remember, the WinXP sleep function still left my PC running, or at least the basic parts of it.

Anyway, I only posted after searching Google and finding nothing. I'm not looking for a generic shutdown app, but something that will actually use the sleep function. I'll see if the power options thing works, thanks.

Sleep in Vista functions exactly as sleep in XP. the concept of sleep(or standby, as it is more commonly known as) *requires* that the PC still essentially be on, but just in such a low power state that it draws about as much power as the clock running on your microwave.

Why don't you just go to power options and just set vista to go to sleep after "x" minutes of inactivity? You don't need a third party app to tell the computer to do that. That function has been built into windows for as long as standby has been built into windows.

wunderbar

Bama wrote: »

I just want the little power icon in the start menu to actually shut the thing off.

You can tell it to do that in power optoins.

1. Click on Start, and then click on Control Panel.
(optional step, if you have Control panel set to classic mode skip to 3)2. Click on "System and Maintenance".
3. Click on "Power Options".
4. Select a power management plan and then click on "Change Plan Settings".
5. Click on "Change advanced power settings".
6. In the Power Options dialog that appears, expand "Power Buttons and Lid", and then expand "Start menu power button".
7. Click on "Setting" and then choose the function you want the button to perform - "Sleep", "Hibernate", or "Shut down".
8. Click on OK.

Dehumanized

Sleep mode is not a new feature to vista, but vista's sleep mode has been vastly improved over XP. There's an option *somewhere* in the settings to have it go off automatically, but I unfortunately am two states away from my Vista PC, so I couldn't tell you where to look. My computer is set to go into sleep mode after an hour of inactivity.

Some details on how Vista sleeps:

http://blogs.technet.com/robert_hensing/archive/2007/08/05/hybrid-sleep-in-vista-and-s0-s5-explained.aspx wrote:

Anyhoo, when 'hybrid sleep' is enabled in Vista when you make the machine sleep (by hitting the power button or using the power off thinger on the Start Menu) what happens is the system is placed into a low power sleep (for instant-on type resumes that laptop users are familair with) AND the system state is also stored in the hiberfile.sys file. For geeks this is a hybrid of S3 and S4 states. This way if you have a sleeping PC (S3) and it loses power (i.e. goes to S5) - when power is restored (S0) - it wakes up from the hiberfile.sys like a hibernate resume (S4). Cool! In Windows XP sleep and hibernate were two totally separate things - you either slept in 'standby' mode and if the power went out - you were screwed and lost your work - but now in Vista - by default for desktop PCs, hybrid sleep mode is enabled. Now I had actually never witnessed this on my home desktop and certainly never on my notebook - and this is what i wanted to investigate things today.

Darius Black

Dehumanized wrote: »

Sleep mode is not a new feature to vista, but vista's sleep mode has been vastly improved over XP. There's an option *somewhere* in the settings to have it go off automatically, but I unfortunately am two states away from my Vista PC, so I couldn't tell you where to look. My computer is set to go into sleep mode after an hour of inactivity.

Some details on how Vista sleeps:

http://blogs.technet.com/robert_hensing/archive/2007/08/05/hybrid-sleep-in-vista-and-s0-s5-explained.aspx wrote:

Anyhoo, when 'hybrid sleep' is enabled in Vista when you make the machine sleep (by hitting the power button or using the power off thinger on the Start Menu) what happens is the system is placed into a low power sleep (for instant-on type resumes that laptop users are familair with) AND the system state is also stored in the hiberfile.sys file. For geeks this is a hybrid of S3 and S4 states. This way if you have a sleeping PC (S3) and it loses power (i.e. goes to S5) - when power is restored (S0) - it wakes up from the hiberfile.sys like a hibernate resume (S4). Cool! In Windows XP sleep and hibernate were two totally separate things - you either slept in 'standby' mode and if the power went out - you were screwed and lost your work - but now in Vista - by default for desktop PCs, hybrid sleep mode is enabled. Now I had actually never witnessed this on my home desktop and certainly never on my notebook - and this is what i wanted to investigate things today.

This is what I was talking about, albeit explained more eloquently. Thanks.

ronya

Uh, Hybrid Sleep is built-in and doesn't involve changing any files.

edit: also, 08-12-2008 ???? O_o