Three Intune Power Settings outside Ebbing Missouri

This short blog will be about some new, long-awaited Intune Power Settings. I guess everyone knows this problem: How do you ensure your hard disk does not take a nap after some idle time?

I will show you how to configure a device’s power management settings using PowerShell and a Settings catalog.

1. Using PowerShell to configure the Power Settings

Until now, you didn’t have many options to ensure the device didn’t go to sleep. We only had two options.

The first Option to define the Power Options :

The first option you had was configuring these settings by using a PowerShell script (or converting 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 corresponding explanation of each powercfg command above:

• Disable Connected Standby (Modern Standby)
  • 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
  • Prevents system from entering Modern Standby (S0 low-power mode).
• Disable Standby (Sleep Mode)
  • powercfg.exe -x -standby-timeout-ac 0
  • powercfg.exe -x -standby-timeout-dc 0
  • Prevents sleep mode when plugged in and on battery.
• Disable Hibernation Timeout
  • powercfg.exe -x -hibernate-timeout-ac 0
  • powercfg.exe -x -hibernate-timeout-dc 0
  • Prevents system from entering hibernation.
• Prevent Display from Turning Off
  • powercfg.exe -x -monitor-timeout-ac 0
  • powercfg.exe -x -monitor-timeout-dc 0
  • Keeps monitor always on.
• Prevent Hard Disk from Powering Down
  • powercfg.exe -x -disk-timeout-ac 0
  • powercfg.exe -x -disk-timeout-dc 0
  • Prevents hard disk from entering power-saving mode.

The second Option is to define the Power Settings

Creating an Intunewinapp with these two files in it.

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\PowerSettingsc0bc021-c8a8-4e07-a973-6b14cbcb2b7e]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettingsCA83367-6E45-459F-A27B-476B1D01C936]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings38E2C4-E8A5-4A42-B16A-E040E769756E]
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000000
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings48EFA3-DD9C-4E3E-B566-50F929386280]
"DCSettingIndex"=dword:00000003
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00000003

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings996BC0-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

This script practically does the same thing as the PowerCFG command but with one big difference. The power settings are now defined as Policies, and we all know what we can’t do with policies being set. The user won’t be able to change any of the configured policies.

A good idea would be to add an uninstall script to ensure you can withdraw the configured settings. You don’t want them being tattooed. Luckily with config refresh, you can ensure those settings will be removed from the device once config refresh kicks in.

2. Using the Settings Catalog

Have you taken a look at the latest Settings Catalog? If you did, you would have spotted something beautiful. As shown below, we can now configure all the power management settings we want.

The moment you configure and deploy this policy, all of the corresponding policies will be visible in the policy manager registry key. If you open regedit and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\current\device\ADMX_Power

We can spot all the configured power management policies.

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

The results

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

The hard disk power scheme settings:

The power scheme itself:

As shown below, after applying the policy, the power plan is now set to 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, but sometimes a PowerShell could still work better.