A power plan, according to Microsoft, is a collection of hardware and system settings that manages how your computer uses power. Power plans can help you save energy, maximize system performance, or achieve a balance between the two. Power plans are most effective on laptops because the power source is a battery which can only hold a limited amount of charge. By changing power plans between Balanced, Power saver, and High performance, you can control how much power the laptop can consume, and thus extend the battery backup duration or increase the performance of the laptop when desired.
Power plans can be accessed by clicking on the battery icon visible on the taskbar on the laptop, and then choosing the ‘More power options’ link. In computers running off mains power, the battery icon is not visible. On these machines, power plans can be selected via the Control Panel.
This short tutorial will show you how to quickly switch between power plans from the desktop context menu (right-click menu).
Open notepad, and copy and paste the following lines. Then save the file with .REG extension.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
; Created by: Shawn Brink
; http://www.eightforums.com
; Tutorial: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/22673-power-plan-choose-desktop-context-menu-windows.html
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\PowerPlan]
"MUIVerb"="Choose Power Plan"
"SubCommands"="Balanced;PowerSaver;HighPerformance"
"Icon"="powercpl.dll"
"Position"=-
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\HighPerformance]
@="High Performance"
"Icon"="powercpl.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\HighPerformance\command]
@="powercfg.exe /setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c"[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\Balanced]
@="Balanced"
"Icon"="powercpl.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\Balanced\command]
@="powercfg.exe /setactive 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\PowerSaver]
@="Power Saver"
"Icon"="powercpl.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\PowerSaver\command]
@="powercfg.exe /setactive a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a"
Double click the newly created file. It will ask you whether you want to merge the contents of the file to the registry. Click Yes.
Now, right click on the desktop and you should see the "Choose Power Plan" item in the context menu. This means that the registry settings were correctly applied.
To remove the "Choose Power Plan" item from the menu, created another .REG file by copy and pasting the following into Notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00; Created by: Shawn Brink
; http://www.eightforums.com
; Tutorial: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/22673-power-plan-choose-desktop-context-menu-windows.html
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\PowerPlan]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\HighPerformance]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\Balanced]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CommandStore\shell\PowerSaver]
via Eightforums
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