Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Configuration Baseline Reference 3

3 Configuration Item Reference 4

ENERGY STAR Guideline: Windows Vista

ENERGY STAR Guideline: Windows XP

ENERGY STAR Recommendation: Disable Screen Saver

4 Remediation  8

5 Additional Information 9

Energy Guidance 

PowerCfg and Script Details

Laptops vs. Workstations

References 

ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy that helps save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices. The ENERGY STAR guidelines for computers cover both the hardware devices and the power management features expected of the operating system and applications. Windows Vista offers a rich set of power management features, from high-level options, such as sleep and hibernation modes to detailed configurations, such as control of CPU power consumption.

You can manage workstation power settings by using a variety of methods. Windows Group Policy is the primary configuration method for enterprise environments, but its primary use is to set a defined value rather than report the current configuration value. In comparison, the desired configuration management feature in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 reports configuration compliance against a baseline standard definition.

The ENERGY STAR program specifies criteria for hardware manufacturers to achieve defined efficiency levels with recommendations for computer power management settings.

Although the ENERGY STAR requirements are primarily targeted at hardware manufacturers to specify minimum efficiency ratings, there are also guidelines for computer software. These guidelines cover two main categories of operation: display low power mode and system hibernation

This Configuration Pack uses these defined efficiency levels and recommendations as follows:

Have computers enter system standby or hibernate after 30 to 60 minutes of inactivity.

Have monitors enter sleep mode after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity.

Create a warning notification if screen savers are not disabled. If one is enabled, the wait timeout period should be less than the monitor sleep setting.

Because the ENERGY STAR specifications do not include server configurations, this Configuration Pack applies only to desktop and notebook computers that are running Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems. On laptops, the Configuration Pack will create an additional warning notification if these settings exceed the maximum allowed value in DC (battery power) profiles.

For more information about configuration baselines, and configuration baseline rules, refer to the topic About Configuration Baselines in Desired Configuration Management (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121708) from the Configuration Manager documentation library.

Following are the details about the configuration items contained within the ENERGY STAR Baseline.

ENERGY STAR Guideline: Windows Vista

ENERGY STAR Guideline: Windows XP

ENERGY STAR Recommendation: Disable Screen Saver

The PowerCfg utility offers some options for exporting and importing power management settings. For the purpose of remediation, you can export the settings from a computer that is configured correctly and save those to a file. The import process can be performed on the computers that report non-compliance. This can be done manually or by using software distribution in Configuration Manager.

For more details about controlling power management settings and using the PowerCfg utility, refer to the white paper Power Policy Configuration and Deployment in Windows Vista (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121716).

Ensure that you test any remediation process first in a lab, and then in a pilot environment in order to confirm that compliance is successful without causing any negative side effects.

Energy Guidance

Changes to how a computer enters sleep or hibernation mode can interact with other management processes, such as software updates. As a result the changes should be tested in a lab environment prior to production deployment.

There are a number of ways to ensure that sleep settings do not interfere with the distribution of administrative software updates, including:

• Configuring client computers to apply software updates as soon as computers are connected on the network
• Using Windows Task Scheduler to wake up computers to install software updates.   Scripts that are deployed using Windows Group Policy allow you to centrally manage these scheduled tasks. For more information, see Using Windows Task Scheduler to facilitate software updates ( https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121717

• Using Wake-on-LAN technology, to wake up computers in sleep mode at any time to perform on-demand software updates.

For more information on these options see Implementation resources for enterpriseshttps://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122327

PowerCfg and Script Details

The PowerCfg.exe utility is referenced by the scripts in this Configuration Pack to query a computer's power configuration.

The power management features of Windows Vista significantly extend those provided in Windows XP. Additionally, the configuration store location and format changed between the two platforms. The PowerCfg utility ships with Windows XP and Windows Vista, and it is recommended for managing computer power configuration.

The PowerCfg utility is primarily text-based. The Windows XP PowerCfg utility is different than the Windows Vista PowerCfg utility.

On Windows XP, the primary power settings have three different classes of values. "Not Supported" refers to lack of hardware support for the particular feature. "Never" specifies that a feature is disabled. "After <x> mins" declares the number of minutes before standby, hibernate, monitor sleep, etc. Parsing the output of PowerCfg requires understanding these three values. The script output only returns numerical results: 0 (for Not Supported), -1 (for Never / Disabled), and <x> (representing a number of minutes).

On Windows Vista, power settings are potentially more complex than the power settings in Windows XP, but are stored similarly. The units of time are stored separately and are in seconds rather than minutes. 0 is used for "Never" and disabled settings, as a result the script returns numerical results directly.

Laptops vs. Workstations

ENERGY STAR does not specify power settings for laptops that are using battery - DC power mode. However this Configuration Pack warns administrators if DC power settings exceed the maximums specified by the AC power mode settings.

Note: Unsupported hardware will return a value of 0. This value will fail validation. The default configuration items indicate that a ==0 validation failure is a warning, a <> validation failure is an error.

References

For more information about the ENERGY STAR guidance for computers, see the following:

ENERGY STAR Power Management Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121719).

Energy Star Program Requirements for Computers (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121712).

For additional information about troubleshooting desired configuration management, refer to the desired configuration management troubleshooting section in the Configuration Manager documentation library (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=121722) and the Microsoft Help and Support Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=119790).

For questions or comments about this Configuration Pack, send e-mail to [email protected].