After reinstalling Windows XP last weekend, I’ve still been finding all the little things that I hadn’t fixed yet. One of those was to change the Power Options on my notebook.
By default, Windows XP sets the default Power Options to very, very short power-down options.
As shown below, the settings for running on battery power, which I seldomly do, turn off the monitor after 5 minutes of inactivity. They also turn off the hard drive at the same time and put the notebook to sleep.
If the notebook is plugged into the electrical socket, the default settings turn off the monitor after 15 minutes, the hard drives after 30 minutes and put the system to sleep after an hour.
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My choices are more user-friendly, although if I’m running on batteries, I’ll run out of battery power more quickly.
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When I’m running with the power adapter, I don’t like the monitor and hard drives to shut off too quickly, and since I have my system set to do scans during the night and my Acronis True Image incremental backups during the night, I don’t want my notebook to shut down unless I’ve selected the time.
One of the more significant options, the ability for the notebook to hibernate, is turned off by default.
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The final step I needed to check after reinstalling Windows was to check the "Advanced" tab of the Power Options. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get prompted for a password when resuming from Standby, although some people will want this feature if they travel with their laptops. I also needed to check the settings for what happens when I close the lid and when I press the Power button.
Tech Tip
Note that the Hibernate option is not available unless you go to the Hibernate tab and enable it.
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