Windows – How to auto shutdown laptop on AC power loss

laptoppower-managementwindows 7

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition on a Dell Inspiron.

How do I make my laptop shut down instead of running on battery after an AC power loss?

The idea is to have µTorrent run at night but not waste battery in the event of power loss (frequent around here). It would be great if the mechanism could be turned on and off easily as I only want the laptop to auto shutdown when I'm fast asleep – not every time the power goes out.

I tried making a new task using the Task Scheduler (in Administrative Tools), but couldn't figure out where the AC power loss event is to put it in the trigger.

Best Answer

I would go to Power Options > "Create a power plan". Call it "Night Time", and use any of the preconfigured power plans as a template.

On the next screen where you get the options "Turn off the display" and "Put the computer to sleep", choose "Change advanced power settings".

In the new window, set "Low battery level" to 99% and choose "Shut down" for "Low battery action".

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I would just warn you though, by using this method, you need to make sure you quickly change back when you restart the computer otherwise it will just turn itself off again.

I would recommend that you type the following - powercfg -list from the command line and take a copy of the GUID of your main plan, then, I recommend you create a scheduled task to run at system startup that looks similar to this (for high performance): powercfg.exe /setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c

If your house is anything like mine, I get little power cuts that last around 5 minutes once every few weeks - to counter this, consider using 80% or similar as the shut off percentage.

Hope this helps!

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