Power Options in Vista
January 24th, 2020
Sometimes when you set up a custom power plan in vista it won�t stick and it will revert back to Balanced (Default) in the registry even though it says in Power options that your custom power plan is selected. This can have the effect of shutting down your HDD when you least expect it. It can be a real pain & sometimes your PC will just freeze. You may even have to reboot to get it going again.
Here is how to make sure your chosen power plan is remembered in the Registry.
1: First setup your Power plan how you want it in Control Panel/ Power Options and save.
2: Then open a command prompt with Administrator rights�
3: Now enter this at the command prompt – Powercfg /List
4: Check out the list and find your custom plan it will be highlighted with a * copy it to notepad exactly as it is written, & double check it. Leave the Command prompt open.
5: Now open the registry editor and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ControlPanel\NameSpace\and locate this Key – {025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D} – It will be close to the top of the list\ Now click on this Key and you will see an entry called PreferredPlan
6: Compare the entry to the one you copied earlier and if it does not have your specific custom plan numbers listed in step 4: Right-click PreferredPlan, then click Modify. (99% of the time it lists Balanced as the preferred Power plan, check the command prompt list that is still open) you can close the command prompt now.
7: In the Value data box, enter the numbers of your custom plan that you copied earlier in step 4:
Close regedit. You are now done. Unless you have another major issue this will usually stop vista from freezing up for no reason.
A lot of people have had this problem with vista and if your PC just freezes for no reason there is a good chance that it is reverting back to the Balanced power plan and shutting down your HDD. If you have a separate storage drive vista will shut it down as well on the balanced plan.
Thanks for that, i needed it.
Cool.