Some Notes on the Machines

This one is a good basic, it prevents unwanted sleep and sets other helpful parameters. Not a performance setting, not a power-paranoia setting either! It does alter the current power scheme.

# General
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-dc 15
powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change standby-timeout-dc 120
powercfg /change hibernate-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change hibernate-timeout-dc 180
powercfg /change disk-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change disk-timeout-dc 60

# Exposes and zeroes hidden "System unattended sleep timeout"
# which can cause problems
powercfg -attributes SUB_SLEEP 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 -ATTRIB_HIDE
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 0

# Disable hybrid sleep both AC powered and DC
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 94ac6d29-73ce-41a6-809f-6363ba21b47e 0
powercfg -setdcvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 94ac6d29-73ce-41a6-809f-6363ba21b47e 0

# Reapply current power scheme
powercfg -setactive scheme_current

This one makes sure general settings are likely helpful, and also deals with two common troublemakers:

# General
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-dc 15
powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change standby-timeout-dc 120
powercfg /change hibernate-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change hibernate-timeout-dc 180
powercfg /change disk-timeout-ac 0
powercfg /change disk-timeout-dc 60

# Unhides and zeroes hidden "System unattended sleep timeout" which can cause problems
# including, sometimes, automatic unwanted logoff
powercfg -attributes sub_sleep 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 -ATTRIB_HIDE
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 0

# Disable hybrid sleep both AC powered and DC
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 94ac6d29-73ce-41a6-809f-6363ba21b47e 0
powercfg -setdcvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 94ac6d29-73ce-41a6-809f-6363ba21b47e 0

# Reapply current power scheme
powercfg -setactive scheme_current

Had a new one recently. A PC running Windows 10, up to date, was taking about 30 minutes to boot. Turning off Fast Startup seems to have fixed it. Reportedly this will do it:

powercfg /hibernate off

but I used a GUI method: Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable, then unchecked “Turn on fast startup (recommended)”, then Save Changes.

The GUI method is reversible in GUI; the command-line method removed the GUI method from visibility.

Still not sure what the root cause of the situation is, or how to do prevention. But reportedly, a very large proportion of Windows users are in fact hibernating or similar, rather than turning off, and don’t know it, and this can cause Windows updates to fail and other issues related to networking.

It can be very helpful to distribute a power plan in Group Policy, especially if there are laptops needing wifi SQL connections which must not ever cut off. The best way I have found, is to use this location in GP:

User Configuration / Control Panel Settings / Power Options

and create a new one there, with a new name, set as default. It may be helpful to do the same under Computer Configuration just in case there are hidden overrides out there.

There is another set of settings using the power plan GUID, but I have not found any way to automatically distribute power plans via group policy and keep the GUID consistent in all machines, even import/export does not do this.

Try the registry merge here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/197908-power-plan-specify-default-all-users.html

The one under the caption “To Allow Users to be able to Specify Their Own Power Plan”. Tried lots and lots of things, this worked. Its contents are below. After the merge you may have to log off and on or even reboot, before the fix will be operational.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings]
"ActivePowerScheme"=-

There is a mod sometimes needed. There might be a dark green wire plugged into the output’s neutral, and this should be removed if it is present, for full isolation.