Power Configuration or powercfg.exe is a command-line tool in Windows that allows you to configure power system settings. It is especially useful for laptops that run on battery and will enable you to configure hardware-specific configurations that are directly not available through the user interface. In this post, we are looking at the most useful commands for PowerCFG.

Useful PowerCFG commands

powercfg or powercfg.exe can be directly used from the Run prompt or using PowerShell or the Command Prompt.

Here is the list of commands and options you can use, and it uses GUID, which is even more powerful.

Change Power configuration for performance
Tweak Basic Power Settings
Enable/Disable Hibernation
Ask for Password on Screen wakeup
Change the power plan type
Set hard disk timeout
Change wireless adapter power-saving mode
Change sleep timeout
Set what happens when you close the laptop lid
Change Processor Power State when on battery
Set monitor timeout
Change multimedia settings

Use them only if you are a power user, and comfortable with the command line.

1] Set Power configuration to High Performance

powercfg -setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c

2] Tweaks the basic power settings

powercfg -change -hibernate-timeout-ac x

powercfg -change -hibernate-timeout-dc x

Where x is time in minutes. If you type powercfg -change -hibernate-timeout-ac 5, then the computer will hibernate in 5 minutes.

3] Turn off or disable hibernation

powercfg -hibernate OFF

4] Ask for Password on Screen wakeup

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c fea3413e-7e05-4911-9a71-700331f1c294 0e796bdb-100d-47d6-a2d5-f7d2daa51f51 0

(0=false, 1=true)

5] Change power plan type

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c fea3413e-7e05-4911-9a71-700331f1c294 245d8541-3943-4422-b025-13a784f679b7 1

(0=power saver, 1=high performance, 2=balanced)

6] Set hard disk timeout

powercfg -setdcvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e 0

7] Change wireless adapter power-saving mode

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 0

(0=max perf, 1=low power saving, 2=med power saving, 3=max power saving)

8] Change sleep timeout

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20 29f6c1db-86da-48c5-9fdb-f2b67b1f44da x

Where x is time in minutes.

9] Set what happens when you close the laptop lid

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347 5ca83367-6e45-459f-a27b-476b1d01c936 0

(0=do nothing, 1=sleep, 2=hibernate, 3=shutdown)

10] Change Processor Power State when on battery

Use the following options to change the state.

0,1=power saver
2,3=balanced
and 4,5=high performance.

Processor power state

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00 68f262a7-f621-4069-b9a5-4874169be23c 4

Minimum processor state

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00 893dee8e-2bef-41e0-89c6-b55d0929964c 100

Processor power perfstate settings

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00 bbdc3814-18e9-4463-8a55-d197327c45c0 4

11] Set monitor timeout

powercfg -setacvalueindex 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c 7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99 3c0bc021-c8a8-4e07-a973-6b14cbcb2b7e x