Remotely Update BIOS Power Management Settings

Question

We are a large organisation who are currently working on a policy with regard to energy saving. Our goal is to set the pc's to automatically go into standby after a set time. Getting the machines to go into standby is not a problem, but because the BIOS settings, as default, are set to Suspend Mode S3, they are actaully going into Hibernation. We would like to set the BIOS to S1 so that the machines will 'wake-up' much more quickly.   I am using a VB script with Dell OMCI installed to alter the BIOS settings. My tests with changing the Wake On Lan and Chassis Intrusions settings have worked really well.   My problem is that I cannot seem to locate the setting to alter the Suspend Mode to S1 from S3. Does anyone have any idea what the setting is or even if this is possible to change remotely?   Thanks for any feedback in advance :-)

PETER345 · Answer

I think you are mistaken on the power savings. S3 is suspend to RAM standby and is not hibernation. S1 basically is a complete waste and saves virtually no power. Hence, it can "wake-up" so quickly. With S3 you save about 95% of the idle power of the machine. With S1 you save about 5%.

Peter

PETER345 · Answer

Normally, with USB keyboards and mice you can go to the power properties for each device (I am assuming XP here, but Vista might be similar) and indicate whether you want them to be able to bring the machine out of standby or not. I set my keyboard to bring the machine out of standby, but not the mouse. Some people have problems when setting the device to bring the machine out of standby in that S3 standby can no longer be achieved (probably a bad driver?).

Peter

srb01uk · Answer

Peter, Thanks for your reply. You are correct, I think I have been looking at this far too long :-) I got a little mixed up beacsue they actually both suspend to RAM, but obviously S3 is the better option as the power consumption is so greatly reduced because vertually everything else is off.   The actual issue we are having therefore now is, given that the better option is to stick with S3 on our pc's (745's and 620's for the majority), the keyboard or mouse does not wake the machine. Is there any possible way to get this to work, or do you think that the power to the USB ports is also switched off?   P.S. We are on the latest BIOS version on both system types.

Locked Topics – Desktops General

Remotely Update BIOS Power Management Settings

Was this post helpful?