Vista - Useful tool for power enthusiasts on the go (advanced power options)

Want to change advanced power options with a few keyboard presses?

I like changing advanced power options all the time, mostly CPU throttle and brightness (the two most important factors in battery life). I used to have a separate power plan just for different CPU throttles, but that seemed a little inefficient (as did opening advanced power options under several layers of GUI). So I just finished writing up some batch scripts to change advanced power settings.

All you need to do is copy the attached files into the System32 folder (C:\Windows\System32\), for which you'll need to provide administrator privileges. Then, just press Win+R and type the name of the setting followed by the value. For example:

"bri 30" will change the screen brightness to 30%.
"maxp 50" will change the maximum CPU throttle to 50%.
"sleep 5" will change the time until sleep to 5 minutes.

Like so:

By the way, you can change the command just by changing the name of the file. Renaming "disp.bat" to "Display Brightness.bat" will let you type "Display Brightness 4" instead of "disp 4".

Let me know what you think. I can make one for each and every advanced power setting, all you gotta do is ask. Enjoy! (Don't mind giving me rep if you use this, I spent quite some time on this )

System32.zip

Well written! Rep given.

You might also find this batch file interesting. It deletes all file in the .tmp folder. You'll have to edit it in Notepad to change the xxx's to your user name though. After, just right click it and select run as administrator.

More info if anyone wants to write batch files:

http://www.infionline.net/~wtnewton/batch/batguide.html

No need to edit, there's a built-in variable that expands to the user profile folder. (I switched the "C:\Users\xxx" with %userprofile% which translates to "C:\Users\yourusername\")

deltemp.bat

Batch files (the command line in general) is extremely useful. I'm glad I took the time to learn a little bit about it. I also wrote a script that syncs your Firefox bookmarks and history across different Firefox profiles, it runs right before Firefox and then launches FF for me. I'll never get tired of making my computer as efficient as can be.

You could also take a look at windows powershell. Its looking to be the replacement to .bat file scripting:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...l/default.mspx