Vista Power Plan Settings

You get some pretty granular control over power features in Vista. Check this out:

Navigate to: Control Panel > Power Options > Edit Plan Settings

Then click “Change advanced power settings”.

You can choose what power plan you wish to view/edit and if you want to make changes, most require that you first hit the “Change settings that are currently unavailable” link to run as administrator.

This view of the power plan lets you see and edit most every aspect of how power-related features are to be exercised on your system. Here is what you’ll find...

Note: for all of these you can dictate separate criteria for when running on batteries and when plugged in for power.

Additional Settings > Require a password on wakeup: <Yes or No>
Hard Disk > Turn off hard disk after: <# of minutes>
Wireless Adapter Settings > Power Saving Mode <select power plan>
Sleep > Sleep after: <# of minutes>
Sleep > Hibernate after <# of minutes>
USB Settings > USB selective suspend setting <enabled or disabled>
Power buttons and lid > Lid close action: <Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown>
Power buttons and lid > Power button action: <Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown>
Power buttons and lid > Start menu power button: <Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown>
PCI Express > Link State Power Management: <select power plan>
Processor Power Management > Minimum processor state: <percentage>
Processor Power Management > Maximum processor state: <percentage>
Search and Indexing > Power Savings Mode: <power plan>
Display > Turn off display after: <# of minutes>
Display Adaptive Display: <on or off>
Multimedia settings > When sharing media: <allow or disallow sleep>
Battery > Critical battery action: <Sleep, Hibernate or Shutdown>
Battery > Low battery level: <percentage>
Battery > Critical battery level: <percentage>
Battery > Low battery notification: <on or off>
Battery > Low battery action: <Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown>

Note: there is also a button to restore the power plan’s defaults should you want to reset your changes to back how they were when you first installed Windows Vista.