I have exported a Power Plan on another system to a .pow file. I can use powercfg to import the .pow file onto my Reference Computer. I take the GUID that is then displayed and put it in my unattend in the specialize pass:

		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-powercpl" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <PreferredPlan>552a37f0-e021-43b4-aa92-b7149486156e</PreferredPlan>
		</component>

After sysprep, Balanced (the normal default) is selected as the active plan. Any reason this wouldn't work?

EDIT: looks like this option is not supported in Windows 7 SP1?

PreferredPlan

can you still do this from setupcomplete.cmd?

Set this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}

to one of these:

Type 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e to use the Balanced plan.

Type a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a to use the Power saver plan.

Type 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c to use the High performance plan.

**You can also type the power scheme GUID for a custom power plan that you have created. To determine the GUID for all existing power schemes, type Powercfg /List at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935799

Edited October 4, 201114 yr by iamtheky

It looks to me that the GUID for the powerplan is not the same every time you import it. I had it on two different machines with different GUIDs. In any case, having it installed and being the active plan while in Audit Mode survives the sysprep process and is active on a deployed image.

I just find it strange that it was deprecated for SP1 but not RTM.

From the site (emphasis mine):

Note

This setting is for Microsoft-internal testing. Do not use.

Is that what you mean?

Yep that's what I saw. I'm going to presume that it did indeed work for RTM since I had seen it in other people's XML posted here, and is also in maxXPsoft's examples.

It may have, but given it's not technically valid for retail builds, it breaking with a service pack isn't entirely odd either, really.