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« on: January 17, 2008, 06:49 AM »
Thanks for the suggestions.
I wasn't aware that you could set a software timer to automatically wake a computer from hibernation at a preset time. I thought that in hibernation the computer was completely powered off so that nothing was running (apart from the clock which is battery powered). Looks like I was wrong.
Of the two suggestions DShutdown is free but limited to one scheduled event, although that could be the same on different days.
Auto Power On and Shutdown looks far more versatile in that you can schedule a range of different events, which can either be one-off events or regular events. I've downloaded the trial version and so far it looks like it will do what I want. I'll probably buy a copy.
I generally prefer to start from a clean boot as Windows seems to have a habit af gradually "unravelling" as it runs and if I hibernated every time the system might develop problems over a period of weeks. However, If I schedule a reboot, followed a few minutes later by hibernation, this would reset the system to a clean state each time.
One thing I'm curious about......
I've seen figures suggesting that when a computer is in hibernation it uses about 1% of the power it would use if it were running normally. The CPU fan is off so presumably the CPU isn't powered. I assume that most of the rest of the motherboard is unpowered in hibernation, so how does the computer keep track of when to switch back on? What is using the 1% power?