Comments on: Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Switch Power Plans

By: Adam L

Adam L — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:50:43 +0000

I just wanted to leave a comment describing how I made this look really, really good. I highly recommend anyone who did the above, read the below. And thank them too.

I made three shortcuts – Power Saver.lnk, Balanced.lnk, and High Performance.lnk. I customized their icons from the properties dialog to use the wireless signal indicators (sets of two-to-five green bars), which are located in the file C:/Windows/System32/mblctr.exe – there are four to choose from and on a machine with no wireless icons visible or in use, they really suit these power-plan shortcuts. I looked in System32 forever to find ones that did.

So I put them in a folder I made: C:/Users/[Adam]/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/[Power Plans/], which you can name anything you like. But this is the most logical place in a Windows Vista installation for these shortcuts.

The last step is to navigate a new window to Control Panel, make sure you are in classic view. Right click the Power Options icon and select “Create Shortcut.” It appears on the desktop, name it whatever you like. Place it in the folder with the power-plan shortcuts.

Now I listed this folder as a toolbar on my taskbar, and unlocked the taskbar. Make the toolbar as short as possible so that only the name of the folder and a pair of arrows appear. Drag the very last shortcut we created, the one to “Control Panel/Power Options” to the top of the list in our toolbar so it appears above all the specific shortcuts to each plan. Right click the dots which appear to the left of your new toolbar after unlocking it; you can deselect “Show Text” and “Show Title.” Now they will be replaced by the topmost icon, which opens the Power Options dialog. The arrows show the plans, which you can drag into your preferred order. It’s like it was meant to be.

By: Drewsky

Drewsky — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:19:46 +0000

I get “The file…powercfg.exe contains no icons” message when I try to change the icon. Running Vista Business. Anyone else get that?

By: mmhmm

mmhmm — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:32:50 +0000

um, has anyone noticed that this doesnt work after the first time you do it?
or maybe its just me . . .

By: ScottW

ScottW — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:31:30 +0000

Aha! Here are the user-friendly names of the power schemes in the list of aliases:

>powercfg -aliases

a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a SCHEME_MAX
8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c SCHEME_MIN
381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e SCHEME_BALANCED

So the following commands are valid, and test out on my Win 7 RC install:

> powercfg -setactive SCHEME_MAX
> powercfg -setactive SCHEME_BALANCED
> powercfg -setactive SCHEME_MIN

By: ScottW

ScottW — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:25:06 +0000

powercfg -setactive “plan name” doesn’t work for me in Win7 RC. Looking at the command line options as described at TechNet and from powercfg /?, there is no mention of a possible friendly name substitution for the power scheme GUID. Here is the TechNet article for Vista:
http://technet.microsoft.com/e.....48940.aspx

Can anyone else confirm that powercfg -setactive “plan name” works for them in Vista or 7?

By: Robert Lambrecht

Robert Lambrecht — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:09:26 +0000

You could use the Task Scheduler to schedule this command and have the “High Performance” plan during the day and “Power Saver” plan at night. This would save power if you leave your PC on at night and give you benefits during the day!

By: Karthik

Karthik — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:03:30 +0000

Thanks! I have always wanted to have a keyboard shortcut for power mode switch.

Also… I did not know about Win+X combination. Thanks to Borja

By: Nick Staroba

Nick Staroba — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:41:55 +0000

You can also use the command like this:

powercfg.exe /setactive “Name of profile”

Works for me

By: Mike Versteeg

Mike Versteeg — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:33:16 +0000

First of all, let me thank you for all the great tips, I’m so glad I subscribed.

As a programmer I often have to switch between normal mode (i.e. power saver) and a high performance mode when I am doing stability runs of a program. I love this feature, but it would be even more perfect if it would also enable/disable the screen saver. Lastly, would it be possible to indicate (icon) what mode is active?

PS: I realize this is all easy with a bit of programming, but frankly I have too much fun doing it without writing a single line of code

By: borja

borja — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:12:54 +0000

Nice tip!.
In win7, you can use “windows key+x” to switch power plans quickly.