PowerSwitch is a new add-in for Windows Home Server which puts your home server into standby and resumes it at user defined times.
- The add-in is a tab in the settings dialog.
- In the tab you’ll see two time entries and a drop down for selecting power down state. Simply select the times you want WHS to wake up and sleep, the method of shutdown (standby or hibernate if supported)
- Please enter the administrator password into the dialog box. For consistent operation of the shut down task you should enter this. If you feel uncomfortable entering in your password you can wait to do until after the task scheduler task is created. Then you can enter it into the task in the task scheduler (task name is PowerSwitchService).
- If you happen to change your password while you have a task created you should change the password on the task itself.
- Hit apply/ok and your WHS machine will merrily go to sleep and wake itself up at the specified times.
- If you need to access your WHS machine, simply hit the on/off button on your WHS machine to start it. If you’ve woken the machine before PowerSwitch.exe is suppose to turn it back you should kill the PowerSwitch.exe process before it attempts to shut the system back down (five minutes after start). You can restart the process by executing C:\Program Files\PowerSwitch\PowerSwitch.exe. This will immediately put your computer into hibernate or standby.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:25 am
“puts your home into standby”
Nice! That would save me some time before I go to bed.
February 28th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
however reading the more info, its saying it will wake up again every 30mins. Nice add-in but doesnt appeal to me until that specific issue could be resolved.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
this seems to be contrary to design, as when idle the WHS will be balancing the store, and doing other tasks. The design is for an always on appliance.
February 28th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
My strategy has been to run a scheduled task (shutdown.exe -s -t 60) at midnight every night, BIOS power management is set to turn on at 12 noon every day, and as it’s stored out of the way, I use wake-on-lan if I need it at a time when it’s normally off…. If I hadn’t already set it up like this, I would probably use this addon. Sounds like a good idea, though I’d never remember to kill the powerswitch process for out-of-hours use…
February 29th, 2008 at 9:17 am
What he said ^^^
Nice solution Mike J.
March 1st, 2008 at 12:30 am
Hey Mike J.
I like your solution and if you could post a how to do that I on the server side, meaning the task scheduler that could help me a lot, for the bios side I am OK with that if you don’t mind that of course.
Michel
March 1st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Hi Michel,
Thanks for the interest - As you asked, I’ve knocked up some brief instructions on the forum: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=882
I thought if you were interested, others may be too…
Cheers,
Mike J