Turn off power saving options via command line

Question

On Windows XP, the following command in a script will prevent any power saving options from being enabled on the PC (monitor sleep, HD sleep, etc.). This is useful for kiosk applications.

powercfg.exe /setactive presentation

What is the equivalent on Vista?

Answer 1

powercfg.exe works a little differently in Vista, and the "presentation" profile isn't included by default (at least on my machine. so you can setup a "presentation" profile and then use the following to get the GUID

powercfg.exe -list

and the following to set it to that GUID:

powercfg.exe -setactive GUID

Alternatively, you can use powercfg.exe with the -change or -X to change specific parameters on the current power scheme.

Snippet from "powercfg.exe /?":

-CHANGE, -X Modifies a setting value in the current power scheme.

          Usage: POWERCFG -X <SETTING> <VALUE>

          <SETTING>   Specifies one of the following options:
                      -monitor-timeout-ac <minutes>
                      -monitor-timeout-dc <minutes>
                      -disk-timeout-ac <minutes>
                      -disk-timeout-dc <minutes>
                      -standby-timeout-ac <minutes>
                      -standby-timeout-dc <minutes>
                      -hibernate-timeout-ac <minutes>
                      -hibernate-timeout-dc <minutes>

          Example:
              POWERCFG -Change -monitor-timeout-ac 5

          This would set the monitor idle timeout value to 5 minutes
          when on AC power.