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From: Richard Melville on 5 Jul 2010 12:08
I have run WinXP (SP3) for several years and the one thing that has been a
constant annoyance is that the power settings (to shut down the monitor and
disk drives) do not persist more than a couple of days and often will not
stay more than a couple of hours.

It is a desk top machine (Dell XPS-400) and on the Power Options Properties
I set it to "Home/Office Desk" and set Turn off Monitor to "After 15 mins"
and Turn off hard disks to "After 30 Mins". System Standby and Hibernate are
set to "Never".

Each time I "Apply" and "OK" these settings they will work as they should
for some period of time, but they never persist for more than a few days.
When I go back to the Power Options Properties screen, all of the settings
are still displayed as they were, but they are not actually working.
Apparently, something in the registry is getting changed, but I don't know
why.

I can't really put my finger on any particular activity that triggers the
settings to be ignored, but web browsing might be a factor.

Is there a way to make these settings stay in place permanently until
changed by me?


From: Yousuf Khan on 5 Jul 2010 14:24
On 7/5/2010 10:08 PM, Richard Melville wrote:
> I have run WinXP (SP3) for several years and the one thing that has been a
> constant annoyance is that the power settings (to shut down the monitor and
> disk drives) do not persist more than a couple of days and often will not
> stay more than a couple of hours.
>
> It is a desk top machine (Dell XPS-400) and on the Power Options Properties
> I set it to "Home/Office Desk" and set Turn off Monitor to "After 15 mins"
> and Turn off hard disks to "After 30 Mins". System Standby and Hibernate are
> set to "Never".
>
> Each time I "Apply" and "OK" these settings they will work as they should
> for some period of time, but they never persist for more than a few days.
> When I go back to the Power Options Properties screen, all of the settings
> are still displayed as they were, but they are not actually working.
> Apparently, something in the registry is getting changed, but I don't know
> why.
>
> I can't really put my finger on any particular activity that triggers the
> settings to be ignored, but web browsing might be a factor.
>
> Is there a way to make these settings stay in place permanently until
> changed by me?

I know what you're talking about, the same sort of thing happens to me
here. There is a way to save the settings from the command prompt, using
the POWERCFG program. This only works from the command prompt, it's not
a GUI, so it's a little difficult to use.

Basically you can save your settings in each scheme (no way to globally
save the entire set of schemes, but you can save them one at a time).
First to list all of the schemes you have, use the command in the
following form:

POWERCFG /LIST

and then to actually save them, use:

POWERCFG /EXPORT scheme /file file

naturally you'd use the "/IMPORT" switch to bring them back in.

I don't know what causes this either. I suspect it may have something to
do with having multiple user accounts on a machine. Each user account
has his/her own power settings and the last user to use it has their
power settings take effect.

Yousuf Khan
From: Richard Melville on 5 Jul 2010 15:08
Yousef --

Thanks for the quick reply. I will try to use POWERCFG method.

I have no other users on any of my computers, so that can't be it.


"Yousuf Khan" <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:aNKdnemEPPTuvq_RnZ2dnUVZ8gOdnZ2d(a)giganews.com...
> I know what you're talking about, the same sort of thing happens to me
> here. There is a way to save the settings from the command prompt, using
> the POWERCFG program. This only works from the command prompt, it's not a
> GUI, so it's a little difficult to use.
>
> Basically you can save your settings in each scheme (no way to globally
> save the entire set of schemes, but you can save them one at a time).
> First to list all of the schemes you have, use the command in the
> following form:
>
> POWERCFG /LIST
>
> and then to actually save them, use:
>
> POWERCFG /EXPORT scheme /file file
>
> naturally you'd use the "/IMPORT" switch to bring them back in.
>
> I don't know what causes this either. I suspect it may have something to
> do with having multiple user accounts on a machine. Each user account has
> his/her own power settings and the last user to use it has their power
> settings take effect.
>
> Yousuf Khan


From: Unknown on 5 Jul 2010 15:24
Monitor and disk power cannot turn off till the computer is idle for the
total time set.
I suspect you have a virus program or update program running which would
reset
the timer for the monitor shutdown. You can monitor by displaying task
manager
or set the time for a minute or two to see if it always shuts down.
"Richard Melville" <r_melville(a)charter.net> wrote in message
news:%23BxLgxFHLHA.4824(a)TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>I have run WinXP (SP3) for several years and the one thing that has been a
>constant annoyance is that the power settings (to shut down the monitor and
>disk drives) do not persist more than a couple of days and often will not
>stay more than a couple of hours.
>
> It is a desk top machine (Dell XPS-400) and on the Power Options
> Properties I set it to "Home/Office Desk" and set Turn off Monitor to
> "After 15 mins" and Turn off hard disks to "After 30 Mins". System Standby
> and Hibernate are set to "Never".
>
> Each time I "Apply" and "OK" these settings they will work as they should
> for some period of time, but they never persist for more than a few days.
> When I go back to the Power Options Properties screen, all of the settings
> are still displayed as they were, but they are not actually working.
> Apparently, something in the registry is getting changed, but I don't know
> why.
>
> I can't really put my finger on any particular activity that triggers the
> settings to be ignored, but web browsing might be a factor.
>
> Is there a way to make these settings stay in place permanently until
> changed by me?
>


From: Richard Melville on 6 Jul 2010 12:09
I really do know how the shut down features work.

I have no virus, unless it is a trick virus that ONLY causes the shutdown
times to fail

I can set the shutdown for any number of minutes and it ALWAYS works for a
time or two and sometimes for several days. The problem is that the settings
will not work for more than a few days at the most, sometimes failing in
less than a day. I believe that the settings should work forever unless I
change them.

One other thing I notice is that Microsoft Updates almost always cause the
shutdown times to be ignored.

Notice also, as I posted, the shutdown times displayed in the Power Options
menu NEVER change. They just don't work. Each time this happens (the not
working part) I simply reset them to the same values and they will work for
a while.


"Unknown" <unknown(a)unknown.kom> wrote in message
news:%23JTrpeHHLHA.2276(a)TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Monitor and disk power cannot turn off till the computer is idle for the
> total time set.
> I suspect you have a virus program or update program running which would
> reset
> the timer for the monitor shutdown. You can monitor by displaying task
> manager
> or set the time for a minute or two to see if it always shuts down.


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