Customising Windows 7 deployments - part 3.

[anyweb]

Imagine the scenario, you deploy some Windows 7 laptops but receive feedback from the users that they don't like the power management default settings,

to get around this you could use Group Policy or if that's not possible due to time constraints or other issues, you could import the power management settings directly into your image based on whether the target pc is a Laptop or Desktop.

 

The default power management plans in Windows 7 are pretty good, but also quite aggressive, so you will probably want to configure them in some way,

 

View current PowerScheme

 

First of all you will need to understand how to 'see' them. On a Client Laptop (not a VM or desktop, as they won't show the profiles we are interested in) open a administrator command prompt and type powercfg -list

 

 

 

C:\Users\windowsnoob\Desktop\LocalGPO>powercfg -list

 

Existing Power Schemes (* Active)

-----------------------------------

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced) *

Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (High performance)

Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a (Power saver)

 

from the above we can see the the Balanced power plan is selected currently.

 

 

 

Export current PowerScheme

 

 

Now let's make some changes to our Power scheme (as a test, change the values for hard disc time out in advanced properties of the current plan).

 

 

Once you have power management the way you want, we will export our settings using powercfg -export

 

C:\Windows\system32>POWERCFG -EXPORT c:\scheme.pow b20406da-dd0d-432e-859b-399e994c7aff

 

 

 

Import a previously exported PowerScheme

 

 

Now that we have our pow settings saved, let's import them (on another computer) using powercfg -import

 

C:\Windows\system32>POWERCFG -IMPORT c:\scheme.pow

Imported Power Scheme Successfully. GUID: b20406da-dd0d-432e-859b-399e994c7aff

 

and verify

 

C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -list

 

Existing Power Schemes (* Active)

-----------------------------------

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced) *

Power Scheme GUID: 7d67c408-0a5b-4bfe-a2e8-19bcb22cf21e (Balanced)

Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (High performance)

Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a (Power saver)

Power Scheme GUID: cba55b22-5cdc-4a45-b095-225d34a60e99 (Balanced)

Power Scheme GUID: b20406da-dd0d-432e-859b-399e994c7aff (Balanced)

 

Note that even though the scheme is imported, it's not set as default, to do that we have to use the powercfg -set command.

 

 

Set current PowerScheme

 

Ok now that we know how to import it, let's set a powerscheme, to do so use powercfg -setactive guid

 

 

C:\Users\windowsnoob\Desktop\LocalGPO>powercfg -setactive b20406da-dd0d-432e-859b-399e994c7aff

 

let's verify the change

 

C:\Users\windowsnoob\Desktop\LocalGPO>powercfg -list

 

Existing Power Schemes (* Active)

-----------------------------------

Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced)

Power Scheme GUID: b20406da-dd0d-432e-859b-399e994c7aff (Balanced) *

Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (High performance)

Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a (Power saver)

 

It Worked and now our powerscheme is set to our custom scheme.

[Jeremy]

Im not sure what is wrong, but I still cannot find the smstslog file. The only thing I see is in the task sequence report -

 

BaseVar = '', ContinueOnError='' SwdAction = '0001' Set command line: Run command line Working dir 'not set' Executing command line: Run command line Process completed with exit code 1 Command line returned 1

 

This is for the "Import Power Scheme" step. The "Copy Power Scheme" step works fine and does copy the .pow file to c:\windows.

 

This is a 64bit system, I don't need to redirect for 64bit do I?

[Jeremy]

Answered - Apparently I do need to "Disable 64-bit file system redirection" in order for this to work. Everything is ok now.

[DMobley232]

I set mine up but a little different and a few less steps. Just wondering if my method is ok or if I'm overlooking something?

I just created a Run Command Line TS and in command line i have powercfg.exe /setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c

See any problems with doing it this way?

[AdminSccm]

I have tried this but I get an error code (0x000000001)

[ssheehy71]

_{I was wondering how you got the "C:\Windows\system32>POWERCFG -EXPORT c:\scheme.pow b20406da-dd0d-432e-859b-399e994c7aff"? How did you get that GUID?}