Power Saving In Windows XP

[Chris.Casey]

Hi,

We are trying to reduce the amount of electricity that our PC's use on a day to day basis. At the moment, the only powersaving features that we have enabled is that the screens go on standby after 30 minutes. Ideally, we would like the PC to go into hibernation if left idle for 2 hours, but I have a few questions about the hibernation mode.

We have various software updates pushed out to the PC's overnight, if the PC is in hibernation, would it automatically wake and accept the updates as normal?

Would the PC wake on a ping command?

Are there any other powersaving features that are available in Windows XP apart from those listed in the Power Control Panel Icon?

Any help / advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Zxian]

I think what you're looking for is Wake On Lan (or WOL). The network adaptors themselves need to have this feature to be able to make use of it, and you'll need to configure it for each machine, but it'll do what you ask.

Servers (and some routers) can enable WOL on a schedule or manually. Once the computer has started up, you can push your updates as usual. If you've got the Windows XP power settings correct, the computers should go back into hibernation after a specified duration.

[Takeshi]

It'd be simpler to do the patching (perhaps eariler, why wait 2h leaving the PCs idle?) then shutdown/hibernate/standby. You'll avoid any potential trouble with resuming from standby and hibernation.

As I said in another thread, turning off the video display output from the video card does not physically power down the monitors. They still consume power. I doubt if the monitors save much power when not displaying anything and I doubt if turning off the video output saves much.

What power options you get depends on the BIOS. There may well be some settings (like S1, S3 standby modes in mine) which you can set in the BIOS but not in CP.

Edited July 26, 2006 by Takeshi

[pmshah]

It'd be simpler to do the patching (perhaps eariler, why wait 2h leaving the PCs idle?) then shutdown/hibernate/standby. You'll avoid any potential trouble with resuming from standby and hibernation.

As I said in another thread, turning off the video display output from the video card does not physically power down the monitors. They still consume power. I doubt if the monitors save much power when not displaying anything and I doubt if turning off the video output saves much.

What power options you get depends on the BIOS. There may well be some settings (like S1, S3 standby modes in mine) which you can set in the BIOS but not in CP.

If you wish to turn on the machines by WOL, you have to change your mode from S1 to S3, thereby possibly increasing the standby consumption. You should use hibernate only if you are using fixed IP addresses. On dhcp addresses you my run into conflicts as the pc will try to grab the same ip address previopusly assigned to it.

You can use the daily alarm function of the bios to turn on the PCs. You can use use utility like sleepy to switch off the PCs at a predefined time. It will not disturb during your normal working hours. You could also use utility like 4nt to switch off the machines if the DOW (day of week) is Saturday or Sunday.

Of course the best solution would be thin clients but may not jive well the end users.