Energy options permissions?

[karstux]

Hi,

I’m using 2k8 on my notebook and like it so far. But to maximize battery life, I’d like to be able to set energy/performance settings on the fly (by clicking on the battery symbol in the tray.) Problem is, changing the energy settings seems to be restricted to the Administrator account. I looked all over the Group Policy and Security Policy dialogs, and couldn’t find a pertaining setting. Does anyone know where to look? Perhaps in the registry?

[DAz999]

Control Panel,
then select Power Options.

You do need Admin privlages, which you should have if you set ws2008 yourself

[karstux]

I knew about the control panel, it also works through the tray icon. However, I’m intentionally not running as admin – I believe a user account should run with as few access rights as possible. It should be a simple matter of assigning some access right to the ‘Users’ group, but I can’t figure out where to do it… the shutdown right could be easily managed in the security policies editor, but I can’t find a corresponding setting for the power options.

[DAz999]

you can only set it as admin, so login as admin do your settings or create custum settings and your done, I would think its not something you would change every day and it has options for full power and battery mode for each power setting.

[Arris]

hey Karstux,

You can use the following workaround:
In the command type:

powercfg /l

My output is for example:

Existing Power Schemes (* Active)

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced)

Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c  (High performance) *

Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a  (Power saver)

Now create a batch file with the following content, change the guid’s/names to the ones you got when executing powercfg /L:

@echo off

echo Wich Powerplan do you want to use?

echo [1] Balanced

echo [2] High performance

echo [3] Power saver

echo Powerplan: && set /p plan=



if %plan% == 1 set guid=381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e

if %plan% == 2 set guid=8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c

if %plan% == 3 set guid=a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a



runas /user:Administrator "cmd /c powercfg /setactive %guid%"

ping localhost -n 1 -w 1000>nul

echo.

echo Powerplan is now:

powercfg /L|find ") *"

echo.



pause

Example of execution:

C:UsersAdministratorDesktop>powercfg /l



Existing Power Schemes (* Active)

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced)

Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c  (High performance) *

Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a  (Power saver)



C:UsersAdministratorDesktop>changePowerPlan.bat

Wich Powerplan do you want to use?

[1] Balanced

[2] High performance

[3] Power saver

Powerplan:

1

Enter the password for Administrator:

Attempting to start cmd /c powercfg /setactive 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260d

f2e as user "COMPUTER01Administrator" ...



Powerplan is now:

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e  (Balanced) *



Press any key to continue . . .



C:UsersAdministratorDesktop>

You can tweak it by for example removing the pause and echo’s after the runas command or to use parameters so you can just make a shortcut for the different powerplans and only enter your password when changing.

Hope this helps you a bit! 😉

[karstux]

Hey, that’s a great idea – thanks for it and the detailed walkthrough!

[Author]

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