How-To Geek

I've browsed both this site and others and can't seem to find any info on how to write a shortcut that will "turn off monitor" without going into Power Options Properties (Win XP Pro).

I think I found a handy "%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation" short cut target on this site and was wondering if someone knew of something similar for turning the monitor off.

It would be absolutely stellar is someone knew how to create a single icon that could not only lock the workstation, but turn off the monitor at the same time.

Many thanks in advance.

Thanks to everyone who took 2 seconds to look at my question.

As for your question I would recommend downloading the program Nircmd from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html and then you can create a shortcut to "nircmd.exe monitor off" which will turn off the monitor which having to change power schemes which you may want to keep set to a normal value most of the time.

It appears I was too slow in appending the answer of using NirCmd to the end of my post. It seems great geeks think alike :-)

That would make a good article.
Also after looking at your wizmo example I remembered that NirCmd could do that too and more.
Examples:
Wait 1 second and then turn the monitor off: nircmd.exe cmdwait 1000 monitor off
Lock, wait and turn off monitor (See Note Below Before Using): nircmd.exe lockws cmdwait 1000 monitor off
Create a desktop shortcut to run NirCmd to turn off the monitor: nircmd.exe cmdshortcut "~$folder.desktop$" "Turn Off Monitor" monitor off

Notes:
The Lock and Monitor off command seems to conflict with Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC)'s Secure Desktop feature for me. As to weather it works with that on or with Windows XP, I don't know. Would require some testing.

LH, wouldn't that powercfg command permanently change the monitor timeout in the current scheme to 0? Also, that's 0 seconds which might actually disable the feature. Why don't you experiment with it on your system and let me know. I'm not sure I could undue such a setting during the 0 seconds that the display is on!

EDIT: OK, I figured out a smart way to test this. I went into Power Options and set the display timeout to "Never" in the current scheme then used powercfg to look at the value of the timeout value. It's 0, so 0 means never timeout, never turn off the display.

C:\>powercfg -query 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e 7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99
Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced)
Subgroup GUID: 7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99 (Display)
Power Setting GUID: 3c0bc021-c8a8-4e07-a973-6b14cbcb2b7e (Turn off display after)
Minimum Possible Setting: 0x00000000
Maximum Possible Setting: 0xffffffff
Possible Settings increment: 0x00000001
Possible Settings units: Seconds
Current AC Power Setting Index: 0x00000000
Current DC Power Setting Index: 0x0000012c


I'm not sure whether to post this in a new thread or just put it here since it's a similar inquiry. I was wondering whether there's a command or a program out there that shuts down your computer while exiting out of any programs after a specified # of hrs. For example say I want to run an error check on my hard drive at night, but I don't want to leave my computer on the whole night, is there some sort of program that would shut the computer down after about 2 or 3 hrs. Or if I'm running Norton at night is there something that would do the same while exiting Norton before shutting down?

Justin, I was using a page at TechNet for the powercfg command line options:
http://technet.microsoft.com/e.....48940.aspx

However, this page didn't mention that a value of 0 means disabled. Neither of these pages tells the whole story. As you say, the command line option that LH specifies takes minutes, but note the output from the -query option that I posted above where it says: "Possible Settings units: Seconds". I don't see how you specify seconds, but apparently it's "possible". Finally, the use of powercfg as described in the article for Windows Server 2003 is substantially different than the way it is used in Vista. I can see this in the parameters listed in the TechNet article on powercfg for Vista and from the command line options using "powercfg -?". For example, the Vista version of powercfg seems to require a GUID instead of a user-friendly name for power schemes in most commands, such as -query. In summary, a very confusing command with poor documentation.