Windows 7 – How to Execute a Program on Power Events

Hopefully you've found another solution for this task by now, either way this was an interesting problem I wanted to take a crack at, and maybe someone else will benefit. Rather than trying to monitor screensaver states, my solution uses the "idleness" monitoring options within task scheduler. While this was built on Windows 10, I believe the functions used should be the same in W7.

Overview

• The "Idle" windows scheduled task triggers the "Idle" script, and uses the built in idle options on the conditions tab to wait till computer is idle to start, and then stop if/when the computer ceases to be idle.
• The "Idle" script triggers the "Watcher" script, takes your chosen action (dim lights) then continues to run waiting on explorer.exe to exit, which will (should) never happen.
• The "Watcher" script finds the process for the "Idle" script and waits on it to exit before completing its action (turn lights back on).

Basic path of events

1. The "Idle" task attempts to run every 1 minute, but only will run if PC has been idle for your chosen amount of time.
2. "Idle" task runs the "Idle" script. The script triggers "Watcher" script, triggers your chosen action (dim lights), and then uses the "wait-process" cmdlet to wait for explorer.exe to exit, which should never happen assuming Windows is stable, and therefor continues to run as long as PC is idle.
3. "Watcher" script starts and watches for the process of the "Idle" script to exit.
4. User input causes PC to exit idle state, killing the "Idle" task, therefore killing the powershell.exe process of the "Idle" script.
5. "Watcher" script sees the "Idle" script process exit, turns the lights back on and then exits.

Setup

1. Create your script folder which will contain both scripts.

2. Copy the powershell executable into your new folder folder:

   "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" >>>> C:\scripts\dimlights\
   

3. Create "Idle.ps1" and paste in script. On the first line of the script, specify your folder containing scripts and copy of powershell.exe:

   $myScriptDir = "C:\scripts\dimlights\"
   #============= Variables ==================
   $logfile = join-path $myScriptDir log.txt
   $nid = (Get-Process explorer).Id
   $mydate = Get-date
   
   #============= Code ==================
   start-process powershell.exe -argumentlist "-NonInteractive –ExecutionPolicy Bypass -file $myScriptDir\watcher.ps1"
   echo "$mydate - PID: $nid - Idle start action" | out-file -Append $logfile
   #----------------Insert chosen action code here----------------
   Wait-Process $nid
   

   $mydate = Get-date echo "$mydate - PID: $nid - Last line in Idle, should not have been reached." | out-file -Append $logfile

4. Create "Watcher.ps1" in same folder and paste in script, again specifying the folder:

   $myScriptDir = "C:\scripts\dimlights\"
   #============= Variables ==================
   $myPSPath = join-path $myScriptDir powershell.exe
   $logfile = join-path $myScriptDir log.txt
   $nid = (Get-Process powershell | Where-Object {$_.path -eq $myPSPath}).id
   $mydate = Get-date
   
   #============= Code ==================
   echo "$mydate - PID: $nid - Watcher started" | out-file -Append $logfile
   if ($nid -ne $null){
   Wait-Process -id $nid
   $mydate = Get-date
   echo "$mydate - PID: $nid - Watcher end action" | out-file -Append $logfile
   #---------------- Insert chosen wake up action code here ----------------
   }
   else {
   echo "$mydate - PID: $nid - No such process, exiting watcher." | out-file -Append $logfile
   

   }

5. Open task scheduler as admin and create the "Idle" task;

   • On the general tab, choose to "change user or group" that the task is run as.
   • In the "Select user or group" window, click the advanced button, then "find now".
   • Scroll down to find the "SYSTEM" account, click once to highlight, then click OK.
   • Click OK again.
   • Switch to the triggers tab and create a one time trigger a few minutes in the future.
   • Under advanced settings, check the box to "Repeat task every:" and then type into the box "1 minute", and change the "for a duration of" to indefinitely.
   • Switch to the actions tab and add a new action;
   • The "program/script" box should contain the path to your powershell.exe that you copied to the scripts folder earlier.

   • Add the following arguments, replacing the file path with your own:

     -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -file "C:\scripts\idle.ps1"

   • Go to the conditions tab and check the box to only start if idle, setting the idle time to your chosen time out.

   • Check the other two boxes under the idle section "Stop if the computer ceases to be idle", and "Restart if the idle state resume".
   • Click "OK" to save and close the scheduled task.

Hope someone finds this useful!

Tim

Your question is answered in the EXAMPLE section of man acpid. I will adapt to your needs.

• As a root create a file named /etc/acpi/events/power with contents like this:

event=button/power
action=/usr/bin/logger "ACPI_POWER_BTTN_TEST: %e"

• Then run service acpid restart.

• Tail the syslog file like this /usr/bin/tail -f /var/log/syslog

• Press the power button to see your test message in syslog.

• Change the action= line in the power file appropriately to point to your custom script.