Windows XP Help- disable Group Policy over Power Management

[Neilk]

Hi guys,

Is there something I can screw with that will lock down the power management on my work PC?

Our IT staff is clueless and distributes the same Power Management policies for all our PCs, whether it's a desktop, server or laptop through the Group Policy function. I have a laptop and darn it, I want to be able to control the power management myself. Every time I change power settings, it reverts back to the group policy within a few hours.

Supposedly they can only send out one power policy, so they can't discern between laptops and desktops.

Any help would be appreciated,
Neil

[rcecale]

Your IT guys aren't trying hard enough!

Power Management in XP

I frequently find that a lot of folks have not yet discovered all of the cool new Group Policy management features that Group Policy Preferences brings to Windows. As a result, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a couple of blog items about some of these features. Today, I'll talk about Power Management.

When Vista shipped, Microsoft provided a way of controlling Vista Power options using Group Policy. Great! We're all concerned about energy use these days and, as my friend Brandon might say, I'm as big a "tree-hugger" as there is, so I like seeing these built-in features that make it easy to conserve power. But unfortunately, you had to be running Vista to take advantage of this control. That left all those millions of XP PCs out in the cold (or hot, as the case may be), with the only option to buy a 3rd party product or install the very useful, but somewhat heavy, EZ-GPO client service, sponsored by the US Government (http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_ez_gpo).

However, with the release of Group Policy Preferences, you can now control power options on both a per-computer and per-user basis, natively within Group Policy, for XP (and Server 2003) systems. These options are under Computer (or User) Configuration\Preferences\Control Panel Settings\Power Options, within GP Editor. Within this section, you have the option to control both "Power Options" and "Power Schemes". Power Options include global settings like enabling hibernation, and setting the behavior of Windows when the user presses the shutdown or sleep button or closes a laptop lid.

The Power Schemes section is where you can define the active Power Scheme in effect on a machine, and configure the specific options for it, such as how long the display and hard drives will run during inactivity before powering down, depending upon whether they are plugged in or on batteries. You can also use this section to define new custom power schemes that are right for your organization!

And, since this is Group Policy Preferences, you also get the advantage of the item-level filtering feature, which means that you can target specific power schemes to just laptops or just desktops, within a single GPO. And of course, I can't fail to mention that the upcoming release of SDM Software's GPExpert(tm) Scripting Toolkit will support GP Preferences, so you can now automate power management policy changes using PowerShell or VBScript!

Very cool stuff for this tree hugger! I hope you take advantage of this new "in-the-box" feature!

Randy

P.S. Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by Neilk

Hi guys,

Is there something I can screw with that will lock down the power management on my work PC?

Our IT staff is clueless and distributes the same Power Management policies for all our PCs, whether it's a desktop, server or laptop through the Group Policy function. I have a laptop and darn it, I want to be able to control the power management myself. Every time I change power settings, it reverts back to the group policy within a few hours.

Supposedly they can only send out one power policy, so they can't discern between laptops and desktops.

Any help would be appreciated,
Neil

They are lying, lazy, or stupid.

Tell them to make a new Organizational Unit for laptops and don't apply the power settings to that OU.

Unfortunately, if you change the policy on your machine, it will get overwritten by the domain policy, that is assuming you can even get to it (meaning IT hasn't locked it down).

[mikester]

Remove your computer from the Domain. It will have side affects and I don't recommend it but if your IT is dumb...

[emcon5]

Originally Posted by mikester

Remove your computer from the Domain. It will have side affects and I don't recommend it but if your IT is dumb...

The largest of which is he probably won't be able to log in. I doubt he is using a local account.

[Neilk]

This is why this site is so great. Thanks for the great links.

I forwarded to our local IT guy who will forward it on to corporate IT.

I think Randy is wrong that they aren't trying hard enough. Emcon nailed it "They are lying, lazy, or stupid."

Thanks again,
Neil

[HardDrive]

Originally Posted by emcon5

They are lying, lazy, or stupid.

Tell them to make a new Organizational Unit for laptops and don't apply the power settings to that OU.

Unfortunately, if you change the policy on your machine, it will get overwritten by the domain policy, that is assuming you can even get to it (meaning IT hasn't locked it down).

+100

OU for laptops, GPO called, oh, I don't know......Laptop PowerMgt?