Shortcut to shutting screen off without putting computer to sleep?

I have an MSI GT80 laptop. There are times when I'd like to have the monitor screen go dark while I'm working on something on the other side of my desk. Is there a windows shortcut that I can hit to cause the screen to go dark rather than having to put the computer to sleep or closing the lid?

 

Does the power options not work??? What are you system specs and does the Power options work or not?

 

did you even read his post? Surely not you just like to post whatever comes to your mind heh?

@gmm22 Here you go, let me know how it goes:
Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Turn Off the Monitor

The above guide is for creating a monitor OFF shortcut, if you want to add a monitor off to the right click context menu, see this guide:
How to Add or Remove "Turn off display" cascading context menu in Windows

 

Thanks for the reply Spartan. Admittedly, I'm not very computer savvy but have heard that one should be careful when downloading things. Are you confident that NirCmd is safe?

Update: I decided to download it, and I extracted it to my downloads. I then tried to create a shortcut, and even copied and pasted the exact command line, but I got a error message that said the shortcut name you entered either contained characters that are invalid or was too long. I'll try again now.

 

Put this way this is online posting no one is sitting there to see what is happening and with little information to go one it's anyone guess to what happened. Also you can search online that "NirCmd" to see if there is information if that is safe or not as well. All you one does it search that title and see if others have reported it safe or not. Also one should only download software they did they homework on and if it is really a legit program not malware software. So the next steps is up to you what to do or take it to a computer shop to diagnosis and fix.

 

To be clear I'm not remotely expecting anyone to help in real time. I'm merely following advice already given, talking myself through certain steps, and presenting same here so that any kind members who might respond have as much information as possible in order to further assist, if they're so inclined. In fact, I hope to succeed in creating the shortcut before anyone needs to further advise.

With respect to safety of downloads, I immediately analyzed my own question of Spartan, and I did exactly as you suggested before downloading (verifying through some other websites that NirCmd was well regarded) even before reading your post. Having said that, it's worth remembering the very idea of forums like this is for sharing information, where more seasoned computer users try to help others. If the default advice is "take it to a pro" we might as well shut down every forum that exists. I'm always immensely grateful for any help, I appreciate your post too, but I will continue to try to work through this desired function acquisition.

 

I created a shortcut I called monitor off, but when I double click on it, it takes me to the NirCmd file location instead of shutting the monitor off. Will try again.

 

I successfully created a shortcut for Monitor off on my desktop. I believe the problem was I had extracted the NirCmd.exe file to the downloads folder, and I think the computer didn't like accessing it from there, so I grabbed the .exe file and dropped it onto my desktop. Then I followed the steps described here: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/create-a-shortcut-or-hotkey-to-turn-off-the-monitor/
...and it worked. I know I can move the file somewhere else and clean up the desktop, but I'm going to savor the small victory and leave this for another day. Thanks again Spartan.

 

You're most welcome, as per the instructions in that guide, it says you wanna copy/paste that NicCmd.exe to the following directory:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32

Glad to have been of help.

The internet is full of trolls, just disregard any useless posts and look for the ones that actually do help. Some people just like to post out of boredom and provide 0 value to the community.

Cheers

 

Yes, I missed that. Will move to the right directory. Thanks again.

 

BTW, any tool from NirSoft is safe.

Also, for the future, when in doubt, you could always upload the EXE/File to Virus Total to have it checked across all Anti Virus programs. If more than 90-95% say it's safe, then it is. Sometimes you may get a false positive where your Antivirus says a file is infected so you could also upload it to Virus Total to see what other AntiVirus programs say, if any of them say it's safe, then chances are your Antivirus think it's a False Positive (ie. when a file is detected a a virus when it's really not)