Power policy

[Stan Brown]

I have a notebook running Win XP SP2. When I set a power scheme as
Administrator, does that apply to the whole macine or only to the
machine when Administrator is the current user?

I've defined a power scheme as administrator and made it active,
then logged off as Admin and logged on as a limited user. The
limited user brings up Power in Control Panel but (1) the power
scheme I created as administrator isn't shown and (2) when I try to
select one of thexisting power schemes I get "access denied".

 

[Jon]

I faced this same problem a while back. I don't have time to verify all of
my comments but I'll try to get you pointed in the right direction.

From an admin account, use the control panel to configure the power policy
that you want to employ in the limited account. Save it with a name. Now
open regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies. In my XP I see keys 0-5 (the built-in
policies), and another one that represents the custom policy that I made
from the control panel (click on the keys in the left pane and the right
pane will show what they are).

Export HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\YourNewPolicyKey to a convenient folder.

Import your new key into the appropriate user within HKEY_USERS.

Now change HKEY_USERS\<Your Selected User Key>\Control Panel\PowerCfg data
value to the number that corresponds to your new policy.

Exit regedit, restart.

Like I said, it's been a while since I did this to mine. What I've written
here is my best recollection. Either this or something very similar works
great on my machine. Be sure to export a backup copy of the keys before you
operate on them.

 

[Stan Brown]

I faced this same problem a while back. I don't have time to verify all of
my comments but I'll try to get you pointed in the right direction.

[Then go into the registry to apply the scheme to the limited
user.]

Hmm ... sneaky enough that it just might work!

But still I'm confused/ If power schemes are per user, as they
evidently are, then why won't XP let me modify the power scheme
when I'm logged in as a non-admin user?

 

[Stan Brown]

I requested help because when running as limited user I could
neither create a power scheme nor select any of the power schemes I
had created as administrator.

Win XP Pro SP2, an Acer TravelMate 4504 notebook

I faced this same problem a while back. I don't have time to verify all of
my comments but I'll try to get you pointed in the right direction.

From an admin account, use the control panel to configure the power policy
that you want to employ in the limited account. Save it with a name. Now
open regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies. In my XP I see keys 0-5 (the built-in
policies), and another one that represents the custom policy that I made
from the control panel (click on the keys in the left pane and the right
pane will show what they are).

Export HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\PowerCfg\PowerPolicies\YourNewPolicyKey to a convenient folder.

Import your new key into the appropriate user within HKEY_USERS.

Now change HKEY_USERS\<Your Selected User Key>\Control Panel\PowerCfg data
value to the number that corresponds to your new policy.

Exit regedit, restart.

Like I said, it's been a while since I did this to mine. What I've written
here is my best recollection. Either this or something very similar works
great on my machine. Be sure to export a backup copy of the keys before you
operate on them.

Belated thanks, Jon. I tend to put off things that involve bouncing
back and forth between Admin and limited user but today I
implemented your solution and it works fine ... up to a point.

The screen blanking now seems to happen when desired, but Standby
and Hibernate don't. (I can standby or hibernate manually with no
problem.) After some gogling I believe the problem may be that
Symantec Antivirus is running a background scan and this prevents
the Standby or Hibernate timer from recognizing a large enough
period of inactivity.

Does that sound right? (If so, it's yet another way that PoS
messes up my system, yet my college requires it as a condition of
connecting to the network.)