Bobi's IT tumblelog

Go green(er) with Windows 7 and powercfg -energy

Windows 7 has a new power management debugging option built into powercfg.exe that can be used to expose potential power hogging drivers and configuration issues that could be eating away at your battery life and driving up your power bill.

As the description states, it is best to run while the system is idle, much like the WinSat “Windows Experience Index” process.

Running powercfg -energy, you end up with results like this:

Enabling tracing for 60 seconds…
Observing system behavior…
Analyzing trace data…
Analysis complete.

Energy efficiency problems were found.

21 Errors
17 Warnings
10 Informational

Using the default options, a file called energy-report.html will be created in the current directory from which powercfg.exe execute and gives you a snapshot of your system energy consumption over a 60 second period.

My laptop’s report during idle was not particularly interesting, so here is an example of energy-report.html while my system was under light load with the usual devices I have plugged in my docking station. I seem to have many Suspend unfriendly USB devices.

Using PowerCfg to Evaluate System Energy Efficiency: PowerCfg.docx

HP Web Jetadmin software

Count on powerful web-based print management that’s fast, easy, and reliable. Install, configure, troubleshoot, and manage both HP and non-HP networked print devices. New features include advanced configuration and maintenance capabilities and more robust alerting and reporting functions. Improve productivity and reduce operation costs with an award-winning, industry-leading print management solution. HP Web Jetadmin 10.2 delivers improvements in speed, ease of use, and reliability. Retain your existing HP Web Jetadmin configuration with automated, built in backup and restore features

http://h20338.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cache/332262-0-0-225-121.html

Disk2vhd v1.0

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Introducing Sandboxie

Tired of dealing with rogue software, spyware and malware? Sandboxie runs your programs in an isolated space which prevents them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer.

Benefits of the Isolated Sandbox:

• Secure Web Browsing: Running your Web browser under the protection of Sandboxie means that all malicious software downloaded by the browser is trapped in the sandbox and can be discarded trivially.
• Enhanced Privacy: Browsing history, cookies, and cached temporary files collected while Web browsing stay in the sandbox and don’t leak into Windows.
• Secure E-mail: Viruses and other malicious software that might be hiding in your email can’t break out of the sandbox and can’t infect your real system.
• Windows Stays Lean: Prevent wear-and-tear in Windows by installing software into an isolated sandbox.

http://www.sandboxie.com/