Information Madness

Would you like to turn off your computer at night and let it boot automatically at a prescribed time in the morning? The  computer can be ready for you when you get up in the morning. It is quite painful to wait while a computer is booting. Many people may give a wrong suggestion that you can leave your computer on for twenty four hours. This will drain the electricity without any good reason. It is quite easy to start your computer up each morning when you get up or when you come home from work. You can also set it to shut itself down when you are done with it in the night.

 You will have to edit your BIOS settings to start your computer automatically at a selected time of the day. Boot your computer up and enter your BIOS setup. This will involve pressing the `Delete’ key as your computer is in the process of booting. You can then move on to the `Power Options’. If your BIOS supports it, there has to be a function for automatically starting your computer up at a specific time of the day. It may be called, `Resume by Alarm’.

Enable such a setting and set a time you would like your computer to start every day. Save and exit the BIOS and the computer should follow the schedule henceforth. If you shut down your computer roughly around the same time each night, you can set it to shut down itself on schedule. You can do this with `Windows Task Scheduler’. Hit the `Start’ menu and type in `Task Scheduler’. Open up the `Task Scheduler’, hit `Create Task’.

Give it a name. Under the `General’ tab, check `run with highest privileges’. While doing this, also check `run whether user is logged in or not’ for the time if you ever leave your computer logged out. Go to the `Settings’ and check `stop the task if it runs longer than’ and set it to `1 hour’. This will not stop your computer from sleeping but it will stop your computer from thinking that a task is still on and running. Go to the `Actions’ tab, hit `New’ and choose `Start a program’. Set the program to `Shutdown’ and the arguments to `-s’. Go to the `Triggers’ tab and click `new’. Change the schedule to fit whatever time you want (for example, midnight) and hit `OK’. Hit `OK’ again at the next window and your task will be saved in the `Task Scheduler’. The entire process is done. Your computer will shut down and start on the schedule that you have set.