Last Updated on February 4, 2022 by rudyooms

This short blog will be about some new long-awaited Intune Power Settings. I guess everyone knows this problem.

How to make sure your hard disk is not going to take a nap after some idle time?

I am going to divide this blog into 2 parts.

1. Using PowerShell

2. Using the Settings Catalog

1. Using PowerShell

Until now, you hadn’t many options at your disposal. We only had 2 options

The first Option:

The first option you had was configuring these settings by using a  PowerShell script (or convert the script to an exe and a win32app)

powercfg -setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347 5ca83367-6e45-459f-a27b-476b1d01c936 0
powercfg -setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347 5ca83367-6e45-459f-a27b-476b1d01c936 0
powercfg.exe -x -standby-timeout-ac 0
powercfg.exe -x -standby-timeout-dc 0
powercfg.exe -x -hibernate-timeout-ac 0
powercfg.exe -x -hibernate-timeout-dc 0
powercfg.exe -x -monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg.exe -x -monitor-timeout-dc 0
powercfg.exe -x -disk-timeout-ac 0
powercfg.exe -x -disk-timeout-dc 0

The second Option

Creating a Intunewinapp with these 2 files in it (or maybe add an uninstall script)

Content of the REG

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings]
"ActivePowerScheme"="8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\3c0bc021-c8a8-4e07-a973-6b14cbcb2b7e]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\5CA83367-6E45-459F-A27B-476B1D01C936]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\6738E2C4-E8A5-4A42-B16A-E040E769756E]
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\7648EFA3-DD9C-4E3E-B566-50F929386280]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000003
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000003

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\96996BC0-AD50-47EC-923B-6F41874DD9EB]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000001
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\A7066653-8D6C-40A8-910E-A1F54B84C7E5]
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000002
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000002

and the content of the PowerShell script

Start-Process -filepath "C:\windows\regedit.exe" -argumentlist "/s .\ADMX_POLICIES.reg"
gpupdate /force
New-Item -Path "c:\" -Name "temp" -ItemType "directory" -force
$path = "c:\temp"
New-Item -path $path -name "power.txt" -ItemType file -force

2. Using the Settings Catalog

Have you taken a look at the latest Settings Catalog?

That looks great, it really does. The only requirement, for now, you will need to have the Windows insiders build. So deploying this right now… will not have the effect you would hope for. We need to have some patience before we can use it in production.

UPDATE 05-09-2021…. GO out and make use of these settings! as they are no longer insider preview targeted

Before I will show you the results, let’s take a look at the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\current\device\ADMX_Power

If you want to read all about this CSP, here is the link to the official Microsoft doc

Policy CSP – ADMX_Power – Windows Client Management | Microsoft Docs

Now we have seen, we can configure this setting with the setting catalog let us take a look at the results:

The hard disk power scheme settings:

And the power scheme itself: High performance, just how I like it..

Conclusion:

I can’t wait until we can use these power settings in production. Using the Settings Catalog is way better than a Powershell script of course but sometimes a PowerShell could still work better?