Program computer to turn on and off.

Hey guys,

I've got a computer that I'm setting up as a home server so we can access files and have a print server also and I want to program the computer to turn on at a certain time of day and then turn off x many hours after. If there any software that can do this, It's a 5 year old AMD desktop so I'm not sure of the bios settings.

Cheers.

 

To turn on a computer remotely from an powered OFF state you will need WOL (wake up on lan). Both router and mobo/NIC need to support this.

If you put it to sleep instead, you can get set up a task scheduler to wake it up and run a command script to turn it off

To turn it off after xxx hours just make a quick .bat script and put it on a task scheduler.

/shutdown -s -t "xxxx"

xxxx = seconds

 

Feel like making one for me, which I could change the hours of?
ahaha ;D

 

bump .

 

You can only turn a PC "on" from sleep mode, not hibernate or powered off. You can easily set up your computer to sleep after x minutes from your power options settings. And then activate "Wake on LAN" from your BIOS.

What software are you using as a home server? Windows Home Server (WHS)? I highly recommend that. It can be quite cumbersome to configure a regular Windows installation to act as a server. You can pick up a copy of WHS for $99. It pretty much automates all your PC backups, file storage, and other server tasks. Well worth the investment. It also makes it quick and easy to add any additonal hard drives to the storage pool. I'm running mine with an Athlon 64 X2 5200+, 2GB RAM, and have 9TB storage at the moment.

Regarding waking from sleep mode, with WHS there is a program add-on called AutoExit that will allow you to wake up the server from a client, or a client from the server.

 

Don't tell this my computer which I am using as VCR replacement: timer controlled (Windows Task planer) it wakes up from hibernate in order to do its job and then enter hibernation again. This worked with W2k, and of course with Win7 either

Michael

 

That is still a "suspend" mode not hibernate, it is still receiving power to look for signals or timed events. With hibernate, everything in RAM is written to the hard disk and then powered off completely. This is akin to virtual machines and saving the machine state.

 

Sorry, this definitely works. My laptop will wake from hibernate and to run the nightly backups. And yes, I have done the experiments to make sure it was actually doing that and not that the laptop was still awake or only in standby when the backup started.

 

You actually can have a computer turn on or off on an alarm. It is done completely in the BIOS, but you need to have the option in the BIOS to do so. I recommend you just look through all the menus in the BIOS to see if it is there.

 

Trust me, I can tell hibernation and standby apart.
JFTR, another expression for hibernation is "suspend to disk" (STD), standby is often called "suspend to RAM" (STR).

Exactly this happens in hibernation. If you want to avoid this, you need to shut down completely (and pull the plug).

Michael

 

Curious how timed events can work if the machine is essentially off. Unless the BIOS supports storing certain times, which powers on once it reaches that time. None of my machines will wake from timed events unless it's in sleep or standby mode. I use Windows Home Server which uses a local timed event to backup the machine. If I power down any of my four machines, they don't wake. If I sleep or suspend, they do.

 

Seems as if I have a language problem
power down = shut down? Then indeed, the system does not wake up from a timer event, unless you have a Bios option for this.
If sleep = standby (all unneccessary components of the system are disabled if possible) = suspend to RAM and
suspend = hibernate (the content of the RAM is stored to HDD, system then "shut down") = suspend to Disk, then we are meaning the same.

Michael

 

Sleep is standby. They just changed the name after XP. Then theres hybrid sleep on Vista/Win7 which saves to disk and goes to low power state.

I dont use hibernate much but im pretty sure you can only wake it up by pressing the power button. Its power state is completely off except for bios triggers.

 

Ok, so I'm not completely crazy (yet)...

 

I don't think so. I used to had a desktop which I can kick it up using WOL when it is hibernated or powered off. That was when it was still running XP.

For a desktop, the power is not completely cut even at powered off state(that is basically the same state as hibernation as it is the boot up process that determine whether it wants to resume or boot, not some Sx state).

The only problem of WOL(at least the Windows/Network drivers implementation) is that sometimes the router ARP would kick it up unnecessarily. That depends on the particular network card and router I assume.

 

Yes with WOL of course, but we are talking about waking it up from hibernation without intervention (using a program or windows task scheduler).

 

ah, stand corrected.

 

My Samsung R780 will definitely wake from hibernate due to run the backups. And I'm pretty sure the ASUS F3Sv I had before did as well. I have always assumed that when you tick the "Wake the computer to run this task" option in the properties for a scheduled task, that it set the BIOS trigger to do the wake up.

The Windows help for this option seems to think it will wake the computer from hibernation. It contains the following:

When the Task Scheduler service wakes, the computer to run a task, the screen may remain off even though the computer is no longer in the sleep or hibernate mode. The screen will turn on when Windows detects that a user has returned to use the computer.​

Maybe it is a hardware or BIOS issue. Some computers support it, some don't.