Hibernating and Waking computer at specified times

27Jan11

I like my computer on and ready to react as soon as I want to use it, and for this reason I never manually shut it off.  But does it really make sense to keep it on 24/7, even when I’m at work or asleep?  Probably not.

To get the best of both worlds, I use Windows Scheduled Tasks to automate hibernating and waking the computer.  I know I leave the house for work at X time, and won’t return until X time at night, so I might as well save a few dollars in electricity and have the computer shut itself off and turn back on when I get home.

Assuming you know how to add a scheduled task, add one to ‘run a program’ with the command below. You’ll also have to choose the option ‘run with highest privileges’ and then select the weekdays and times you want the computer to shut itself off.


shutdown /h The /h designates ‘hibernate’.

Then to wake the computer, add another scheduled task to start a program. It really doesn’t matter which program you choose, because it’s the ‘conditions’ tab of the scheduled task we’re interested in. On the ‘conditions’ tab, select ‘wake the computer to run this task’.

That’s all it takes. The computer will shut itself off and then turn itself back on at the times specified in each scheduled task. If you scheduled it to shut off 10 mins after you leave and turn back on 10 mins before you get home, you’ll never notice a thing. Well, maybe you’ll notice the savings on your electricity bill.

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