Scheduling PC to wake up for maintenance tasks ???

[Boon]

Is your computer going to sleep or powering off/hibernating?

Most modern computers can be told to do a wakeup at a scheduled time in the BIOS which will even work if the computer is 'off'. I used to use my desktop as an alarm clock...

[Fish Chris]

Hey Boon, my PC is going to sleep. I haven't even seen the option that makes it go into hibernation in Vista, and I'm not even sure I'd want it to. As it is, all the fans and lights go off, and it can't be using very much electricity whatsoever, yet when I hit the restart button, it fires right up, and it's ready to go without having to actually reboot.

On the other hand "NOTHING" seems to wake it up ! Not a scheduled task..... not the gadget Logan showed (although mine might be slightly different... will get back to that in a minute) and yes, I went into the BIOS last night, and found the "Resume by Alarm" section. Tried repeatedly to make that wake up my PC, but that doesn't work either

Logan, the little gadget you showed has one extra trash from the one I downloaded and tried. Yours has a blue trash with a little down arrow ??? Is that the one that will wake the PC back up ?

Because when you stop to think about it, how could a PC "restart" if it wasn't already running to begin with, anyway ? These programs all look like they are made to "turn off, or put your PC into hibernation" but Win Vista already does that just fine. I need something to do the opposite ! ....to wake up the PC to do it's maintenance.... and so far, nothing works

Much thanks for your attention though,

Peace,

Fish

[Fish Chris]

Well, it's about freaking time !

First off, I found out that Vista does have the hibernate feature..... It just confused me a little, as it doesn't come up in the "Power Management" section {kind of dumb if you ask me..... what, having the PC in hibernation doesn't save power, too ?}

Anyway, then I did the "Resume by Alarm" in my BIOS, and while it does not work in the "Sleep" mode, it does work with Hibernation So I set it for "Every day at 1:55am"

Next, I downloaded one of the "Auto Shutdown gadgets that Logan turned me onto {Thanks dude} "Auto Shutdown" which includes a timer, and another line for the count down..... and it allows Shutdown, Hibernation, Restart, and Lock. So I set it to automatically go back into Hibernation, everyday at 4:00am

Finally, I went back and set my AVG virus scan to run every day at 2:00am.... my system defrag to run once a week at 3:00am Weds..... and as soon as I get it set up, I will back up my PC to back up HD, once a week at 3:00am on Thurs.

So finally, I can let my PC do it's thing, on a schedule set by me. The only thing I need to do manually is hit the "Hibernate button" whenever I am done using the PC..... and I even made that easier, by downloading another little gadget that is just basically a small block with the "Hibernate, Shutdown, Restart, and Lock" icons, which I have sitting down in the bottom left of my desktop..... So, no need to "click on the Windows flag, then scroll over on the hibernate button... click it, then get the, "Are you sure" ? window ! Yes, I'm freaking sure ! That's why I have now bypassed that BS

Now, I click the Hibernate trash, relocated to my desktop once, and it says, Windows will shut down in 3,2,1..... Good, that's all I need to know.

Peace,

Fish

PS, I did test all of this first, by setting the BIOS to Resume by Alarm at 17:00 hours, then the "Auto Shutdown" to "Hibernate at 17:05 hours, then clicking on my Hibernation trash on my desktop at 16:55 hours... and Bam, it shut straight down... 5 minutes later, it fired right up. 5 minutes after that, it shut right down again

I don't know why this darn PC ever wanted to argue with me in the first place ! It has to know I'm as stubborn, and persistent as they come

[loganberry]

glad you got it figured out...sounds like your computer has a ton of timers on it now lol