turn pc on and off at a certain time

[sitlet]

forgive me for the stupid question, but is there a simple way to turn a computer on and off at a certain time? i have a laptop and dont want to leave it on all the time, but i want to have it turn on for an hour during the day. how can i do this?

[redwudz]

Included with XP is a scheduling program for that purpose. Go to your 'Control Panels>Scheduled Tasks'. There is a 'Wizard' to guide you through the rest of it. It's best with a selected program to run. If you just want to turn on the PC, look to your BIOS settings. There is usually a setting there that will turn on the computer at a scheduled time.

[jimmalenko]

1. Check your BIOS for a Wake Up or Power up setting. This will get the PC on.

2. Create a batch file by opening notepad and saving as shutdown.bat. Put the following into the batch file:

shutdown.exe -s -f -t 5

This will shutdown the PC, force running applications to close, and commence the shutdown procedure 5 seconds after running of the batch file.

3. Use Scheduled Tasks to run the batch file at the scheduled shutdown time.