Can I tell my computer to turn itself off?

betmunch

Hi Everyone,

I need to leave my computer running sometimes when I go to work.

I would like to know if there is a way to set it to turn itself off at say, 11am?

I bought a timer plug thinking that would work (battery only last about 10mins now!) but that just stays on even though its meant to cut out!

Any ideas?

ThomasK31ly

Create a batch file or use Task Scheduler.

gaming_guy

....................

ThomasK31ly

Cheers ..;)

betmunch

Thanks, I think I have done it, will find out when I get home from work tomorrow!

rodenal

Windows 7 and vista both have gadgets you can download that will let you either pick a time.for automatic.shutdown or tell it to shutdown in x hours. They work well. There are also free programs available if your on xp.

Your batch file will be doing the same job tbh, but f you have trouble these are worth looking into

A.Penny.Saved

You haven't mentioned what operating system you are using. If you were using XP then PowerOff would do what you wanted plus some extra stuff such as Standby, hibernate and it is possible to do them after a process stops so you could have a program auto close itself and then the PC would shutdown/hibernate/standby.

That is freeware but probably won't work with Win 7 as it's quite old but it's very good and has more features than many other such programs.

Here is a list of programs, many of which are Win 7 compatible.
http://www.freewarefiles.com/category_9_224.html

EvilScotsman

I've found this program to be useful:

http://www.sinvise.net/home/projects/software/shutdown-timer

closed

what's the reason it needs to be running?

A timer plug would probably corrupt your hard disk

boxst

If you are using the batch file, do shutdown -s -f (the -f forces any tasks that do not want to stop to end)

Steve

asc99c

I mostly leave my computers in standby mode, rather than fully switched off, because after checking the power usage in standby it's only about 3W. Windows power settings let you tell the PC to go into standby after no user activity has been seen for some amount of time.

If your PC is using much more power in standby, it probably means it is using the 'wrong' sleep mode. I found media centre standby tool enormously helpful in enabling the proper deep sleep mode (S3) on my computer. By default it was in S1 mode which was using about 30W.

http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml

Plus in S3 sleep, the PC should restart really quickly. I tap a key on the keyboard, then power up the monitor, and by the time the monitor is on, I've got my desktop showing and usable.