How to power up the PC?

Question

hi I want to know how i can power up the PC based on the clock? It's just like our alarm in mobile even though i turn off the mobile if the alarm was set i should be able to power up the PC based on the time set before power off. How can i do this? My initial idea is like i want to try it out in windows which would ask for time and date to be set and based on that i would also ask to choose a music file or play list to be chosen and would play the same based on the settings made? It's one of my little dream project's. Note: Language is not a barrier for this I am ready to try it out in either C# or VC++ or C in the worst case if the process forces me to do that i would go for VB.

Karthik Agarwal · Answer

I am not sure what you mean to say. Anyways what i want is i will set time and date in windows form kind of thing(in a stand alone PC) then if i go to windows button and click shut down button and then based on the time and date it should turn on. That is what i mean to say. Hope you will clear this time. I hope there should be a way to do this.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

It depends on what you mean by turned off. If you mean pushing the power button (the physical button) then no it does not actually turn the power off. For smart phones turning the power off so that the processor does not execute and the phone does not use power means that you need to shutdown the system. I am not sure I even know how to do that using my phone. I have a Droid X. If I hold the power button down for a few seconds then I get a window with a few options one of which is to Power Off. I assume that powering off that way is different from powering off when I press the power button for a second or less. Programs such as Lookout Security & Antivirus can turn on a phone's GPS (if it is off) in the phone and get the phone's location without the person with the phone knowing that is being done all from a server someplace. This is done for security so if a phone is stolen the phone's owner can determine the location of the phone but the thief does not know it is being done and the phone's owner does not want them to be able to stop it. The phone's owner just uses a browser and an internet connection to request that Lookout get the phone's location. EveryTrail can keep track of where you are when hiking so then you can upload that information for future reference. EveryTrail can track your location because it executes on a timer to periodically get the location.

Karthik Agarwal · Answer

You mean to say that even though the mobile phones are turned off it still executes some machine instructions in the background.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

Sometimes we must think about things. How is the PC going to turn itself on when it has no power? There is no power going anywhere when a PC is turned off. Well okay; I guess there is normally a green light on the system board (motherboard) that is on even when the power is off to the rest of the system but there is no power going to anything that executes machine instructions or anything that can turn on the PC. There might be system boards that have the feature you are seeking but it is not a feature of most system boards. What mobile turns itself on when it is turned off? Note that smart phones have a switch that turns off the display but it does not turn off the processor from executing. The processor continues to execute some programs. That is the reason why the batteries of smart phones drain so quickly. Supposedly law enforcement can turn on a phone that is turned off and that is very much like what a PC does for a wake on LAN. Do you know of any phone that can turn itself on when it has been powered off? I don't mean the type of off that we usually do with smart phones; with smart phones I mean the same thing as shutting down the system and then the system must be restarted (rebooted) before it does anything. When a smart phone is truly off it does not receive calls.

Karthik Agarwal · Answer

Is it so can't we turn on the PC based on time just like our mobile does. If I had to do it using LAN i would skip doing this program completely which is not of my interest. I hope there should be a way to do that if not that's a pretty disgusting thing. If it can't be done can you explain me how come mobiles do that not the PC's!

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I am not sure you can do it by time. I do know that it is very normal for a computer to be woken up by anohter computer in the network. The following are a few articles about that. Note that this is not the same as powering up; this will only wake up a computer that is sleeping since the network card needs to have power. So you might be able to get a network card that supports doing the wake up based on a time. Or perhaps a router could do it; I am only guessing about that. Anyway I hope the following helps get you started. Wake on LAN through VB.NET Unwanted wake-up events may occur when you enable the Wake On LAN feature in Windows 7 or in Windows Vista wake on lan Depicus What is Wake On Lan ? Wake on LAN in C# - B# .NET Blog Going slightly green - Wake on LAN from ASP.NET Depicus Wake On Lan over the Internet Wake On LAN in C#