How to configure the Power Options for your laptop

Posted on April 15, 2007 at 6:43 pm

If you’ve recently purchased a laptop or your current laptop’s power features are not configured correctly and you want to learn how to setup StandyBy mode or converse power, then I’ll explain all of that in this post. Basically, Windows has a set of Power Schemes (Max Battery, Always On, etc) pre-defined in the operating system. However, the defaults set in Windows are rarely what I would call optimal settings, especially for Power Options.

To configure any of the power options, you first have to go to Start, then Control Panel, and then click on Power Options.

In the Power Options properties dialog, there are six tabs: Power Schemes, Alarms, Power Meter, Advanced, and Hibernate.

Power Schemes:

This is where you can setup the times for your laptop to turn off various system components after a period of inactivity, such as the hard drive and monitor. Usually, people don’t care too much about this, but turning on your hard drives and monitor will help your computer last longer. Just think about it, the more time the computer is running, the more likely those parts will break down eventually!

As you can see, my computer is set to turn off the monitor and hard disk after 15 minutes. Now this is OK for me, but you have to choose something that is appropriate for you. If you continually leave your desk for periods of up to 20 minutes and come back, then maybe you would want to set it for 45 minutes. But definitely don’t leave it at Never!

You can also pick your own time if you’re not happy with any of the selected power schemes and then click Save As to save those settings as your own customized power profile.

Alarms:

Here you can setup alarms when your battery power gets very low. For example, my computer will give me a message when my batter power gets down to 13% (I don’t know why it is set at 13%!) and will automatically go to StandBy when it reaches 4%. The Windows defaults are pretty close to this, so when your computer shuts down and goes into StandBy mode when your battery is low, it will keep doing that unless you change the settings here.

You can click on Alarm Action to change the type of action.

Power Meter:

This tab simply shows you the current power level for all batteries in the system. If you have none, you will get a display like mine, otherwise you will get a display showing the percentage of the battery power left.

Advanced:

Here you can set a couple of the advanced options for the power settings. If you want your computer to prompt for the login password when it resumes from standby mode, you can check that box. Normally, it will only ask when you first logon to the computer, but not when it comes back from standby mode.

You can also display the power icon in your taskbar so you can see the exactly how much battery power you have left by hoevering over the icon. If you’re plugged in, you’ll just see a plug icon in your taskbar.

Lastly, you can choose what action you want to take when you close the lid of your computer, press the power button, or press the sleep button. The default is to go to StandBy when you close the lid and Shut down when you press the power button, but you can change that here if you like.

Hibernate:

Hibernation is a fairly useless feature of Windows XP that allows you to “turn off” your computer and load it up later on without having to restart. It’s not very fast and I don’t think most people ever use it! I know I haven’t! It wastes space also because it takes up the same amount of space as the amount of RAM that is installed.

I wrote another post on how you can save lots of hard disk space by getting rid of some space “hogs” in Windows.

That’s it! Now your computer is under your power. Haha lame pun!

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3 Responses to “How to configure the Power Options for your laptop”

Ebere,G.C said on : September 4th, 2007 at 8:28 am

The explanaton above is ok. But what happens in a situation where your power options settings shows only “Power schemes, Advanced Hibernate and UPS”? Please I need your suggestion on this.

akishore said on : September 4th, 2007 at 8:41 am

Hi Ebere,

Are you checking this on a desktop computer? Actually, Windows automatically detects what type of hardware you have and it has probably removed the Alarms and Power Meter tabs because they are only needed for laptops that have batteries. If you’re on a desktop, there is no battery and hence no need for a low battery alarm or power meter.

Let me know if that what’s it was! Thanks!

krishna said on : May 6th, 2008 at 6:13 am

Power options settings shows only “Power schemes, Advanced Hibernate and UPS” in case of laptop only ? Please I need your suggestion on this. Does, I have to load explicitly any DLL’s