Making the most of Windows Power Plans
Published: 2021-12-06 04:00:12

Many of you who are longtime Windows users will have gone into the power plan settings at some point, but you may not have known there are potentially some hidden options you were not aware of. Power plan has options for various hardware and software on your computer  that can be adjusted to target maximum performance, or maximum efficiency. Most of the settings are not that important if you have a desktop (which can always have max performance with no battery to worry about), but if you have a laptop, they will become very relevant as you balance power consumption (and therefore battery life) with performance. Some might still care about these settings on desktops if they really want to reduce the power draw of their system. Power plans may come in handy to solve issues as well, as you will see below.

If you just got a new computer or freshly installed Windows, you may not have all the power plan options available to you. In my case, I got a new laptop which had Windows preinstalled to include the manufacturer's specific configurations. I ran into my first issue which involved opening the power plan settings, only to realize the option I wanted was not there. My laptop had unstable Wi-Fi connectivity that would disconnect after a few minutes of use, and I narrowed it down to changing a setting for the wireless adapter in power plan. Knowing I had seen the setting before (on other computers), I searched to see why there was not a setting for the wireless adapter in power plan. I discovered that I had to manually enable this setting using the Registry Editor or Command Prompt.

To see the different power plans, search "Power Plan" in Windows search and select "Choose a Power Plan" to open the relevant page in Control Panel. You will land on the following page:

![Main Power Plan screen](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nyh14zu738msi1aty557.png)

You may or may not see a few pre-configured plans, such as "High Performance" or "Power Saver" as seen above. You can click "Change plan settings" which is circled, but before you start making any changes, you might want to make a new power plan so you can always go back to the default one that was selected before. 

## Creating new Power Plan
### Method 1 of creating power plan using Control Panel
To do so using Control Panel, click on "Create a power plan" on the left sidebar shown below: 
![Creating a power plan](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tffcklc69wygkdg2rs2l.png)
From there, you can select which plan to base the new plan off of, and give it a name. 

### Method 2 of creating power plan using commands
You can also make a new plan using the Command Prompt or Powershell. First run `powercfg /list` to see the list of power plans you have. Copy the GUID of the one you want to be the base for the new plan. If we chose "381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e" then run
`powercfg -duplicatescheme 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e` to copy your base plan into a new one.

After you run that, you will get an output that says
`Power Scheme GUID: <new GUID>`.
Copy the new GUID (in <>) and run the following: 
`powercfg -changename <new GUID> "new plan name"` (do not put "<>" in command).

## Changing Existing Power Plan Settings
Now you should be able to see the new power plan in Control Panel. Regardless of which method you used to create the power plan, now we can go inside a power plan by clicking "Change plan settings" as it was shown above in the first screenshot. You will then reach this page: 
![Editing plan settings](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yeta7had38x0rhxes2q1.png)

Once you click "Change advanced power settings" circled in the screenshot, you will see the list of options for that power plan: 

![List of power options](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dvdy083tz12683h17xyz.png)

## Adding Wireless Adapter Settings to Power Options
We will not explore all of the different settings, but let's go back to the one that was mentioned before relating to Wi-Fi issues. You will see in the screenshot, I already have Wireless Adapter Settings available, but I didn't have it initially. To make it show in the power plans, you can use the registry or execute commands.

### Method 1: CMD/Powershell
Open Command Prompt or Powershell as an administrator and execute the following:

```
powercfg -attributes 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a -ATTRIB_HIDE
```
### Method 2: Registry Editor
Please note that making registry changes can cause issues to your operating system, so make a backup before proceeding if you have no prior experience making registry changes. Follow [this link](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-back-up-and-restore-the-registry-in-windows-855140ad-e318-2a13-2829-d428a2ab0692) for instructions on how to backup your registry.

To open the Registry Editor, type "Registry Editor" in Windows search. Then paste the following path in the top bar: "Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings"

If the key "19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1" is not already there, right click on the "PowerSettings" key and select New -> Key and then enter the name of the key to be "19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1".

Now make another key inside the previous with the name "12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a".
Now right-click on the right side and select New -> DWORD and name the new value "Attributes". Right-click on this new value and select "Modify". Now set the "Value data" to be 2:
![Edit DWORD](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qzx20d8y6bsupzod8sa0.png)

### Changing Power Saving Setting for Wireless Adapter
Now you have enabled the power saving mode options under "Wireless Adapter Settings". So if you had not already seen the option before, go to the edit power plan page with the list of options, and you should see the option for "Wireless Adapter Settings". You will see the following list of options under this setting: 
![Wifi power saving modes](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/icskfjh9daz2egyj9bvc.png)

For me, it was set to "Medium Power Saving" by default on my laptop, which explains the intermeditate Wi-Fi issues I was experiencing. I highly recommend setting this to "Maximum Performance" for both "On battery" and "Plugged in" if you have a laptop, as the power draw on max will be minimal, but the Wi-Fi should be much more stable.

## Other Useful Settings
I want to bring your attention to some of the other options which I found useful. My laptop was missing a lot of options, so each option can be enabled using the steps outlined above, just with different values for the keys, which I will put below.

### Processor Power Management
Another issue I had with my laptop was the fan noise was too much, even when not doing much with it. It was not always like this, but only louder when it was plugged in. Once again, power plan comes to the rescue! 

Firstly to enable the options using the command:
```
powercfg -attributes SUB_PROCESSOR 75b0ae3f-bce0-45a7-8c89-c9611c25e100 -ATTRIB_HIDE
```
There are 2 options that are useful for the issue of loud fans. First, is the "System Cooling Policy", which we want to set to "Passive" to reduce fan noise:
![cooling policy](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ykjdx3tox2iuc2uobumx.png)
This biases the cooling towards passive, which means the system will try to leave the fans off for longer than the active setting, which (as the name suggests) actively cools the CPU.

The second option that is really useful is "Maximum processor state" which limits the max load of the CPU. Since the laptop was already fine when on battery, we can leave that option alone and only change the one for "Plugged in". If we change that to anything less than 100% (try a value between 95-99%), the CPUs boosting will be limited. Modern CPUs boost far beyond their base rated frequency, and when laptops are plugged in, manufacturers typically allow for much greater power draw to use the greater power the laptop has available. This explains why leaving the setting at 100% for "On battery" still results in a cooler CPU (less fan noise) because the CPU is set at a lower max wattage. 

I found that 97% worked best, and while you might think that this will significantly limit your performance, it will not make that much of a difference on simple non-intensive tasks. The problem was that at the 100% setting, every small hit on the CPU would cause the clock speed to spike to a very high frequency (beyond 4GHZ on my laptop with a base of 2GHZ) which rapidly heats up the laptop and starts the fans. This constant cycling of the fan is what causes audible fan noise that can be very distracting in quiet environments.

A useful tip is to create a power plan for the limited CPU performance, and just change the plan between the one with 100% and 97% depending on what you are doing on your laptop.

### Hard Disk
This setting is more useful for desktops which still have traditional hard disks as opposed to SSDs. A common annoyance I had with my desktop pc with a traditional hard drive (as the secondary drive) was that it would constantly turn on and off. Since it was not the main drive for Windows, and only used for data storage, it was not used for common operations. Therefore, anytime I would open an application or open a file that made use of the hard drive, I would have to wait about 10 seconds and listen to it spin up before I could continue what I was doing. Even if I wasn't directly accessing files off it, Windows seemed to like to spin it up anyway, drastically slowing down my day to day operations. The solution was to simply increase the time it takes before Windows turns off the hard drive using the power option for it. 

The command to add this option (if missing from power options):
```
powercfg -attributes SUB_DISK 6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e -ATTRIB_HIDE
```
Then in the Power Options menu, you can change the time to whatever you desire:
![Hard disk options](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ne4h9vrboxvvyft42mg5.png)

This is also handy for the opposite case, where your hard drive is making too much noise on idle and you don't use it often. In that case, you can decrease the time period before it turns off.

I hope these advanced power plan options will be useful to you. To see the commands to enable more hidden settings, follow [this link](https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/142867-missing-advanced-power-options.html).

## Resources
https://winaero.com/create-power-plan-windows-10/
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/73119-add-remove-wireless-adapter-settings-power-options-windows-10-a.html
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/95580-add-remove-maximum-processor-frequency-windows-10-power-options.html
https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/142867-missing-advanced-power-options.html