1

I'm currently writing a system tool for devices, such as laptops and tablets, that will activate (or deactivate) certain features within the Windows OS dependent on the current power level, and estimated time remaining.

However, I'm unable to find any information on the web about how to disable power hungry resources, such as graphical things that aren't required (such as the visual effects listen in System->Advanced->Performance Options->Visual Effects).

Now, my question is this: How can I go about disabling Windows features that are unnecessary to the system, and that waste power?

P.S If you need more information, please just ask and I'll try to fill in any gaps.

EDIT: Updated question to fit with guidelines of the website.

John Saunders
  • 160,644
  • 26
  • 247
  • 397
Liam Kelly
  • 231
  • 3
  • 15
  • No, it's not. It's being done on Windows 8.1 for desktop applications, using WinForm. – Liam Kelly Oct 03 '14 at 22:19
  • Ah, that was my bad. I forgot that mobile now means hand sets for the most part. I'm developing it for tablet systems, and laptops. – Liam Kelly Oct 03 '14 at 22:22
  • 2
    Can you tell us why the normal power saving features are not enough? – John Saunders Oct 03 '14 at 22:49
  • Well, my goal is to make an adaptive system that either boosts performance at the cost of power consumption (when the battery is high, or the system is on charge), or to decrease performance to allow for more efficient battery use. The regular power saving features of Windows are good, but I don't feel they're adaptive enough for what I'm looking to do with my system, and thus this project. – Liam Kelly Oct 03 '14 at 22:52
  • You may want to notify a person when writing a comment, for example @BradleyDotNET will ping me when you write a comment. John may not have seen your comment, but if you ping him, it will show up in his inbox. – BradleyDotNET Oct 03 '14 at 22:54
  • The eye candy is deleterious for both performance and battery life. If those are the things you care about, disable it permanently. Deploying policies is an administrative function, not really a programming question (the tools for policy deployment are already written). – Ben Voigt Oct 03 '14 at 22:55
  • When you see it as a policy to be set, you'd search ServerFault, and find http://serverfault.com/q/72844/28549 – Ben Voigt Oct 03 '14 at 22:58
  • @BenVoigt The graphical features were just an example of features I would like my program to be able to alter. I was hoping that if I knew how to change one thing, it'd give me a clue on how to deal with other performance/power saving features. – Liam Kelly Oct 03 '14 at 23:03
  • @JohnSaunders apologies, I didn't realise you could notify people on this forum. I replied to your comment above. – Liam Kelly Oct 03 '14 at 23:03
  • Oh sorry, I missed that you are writing a tool for this purpose expressly. My first read suggested a kiosk-like application that the system should be configured to support. Anyway, you still should ask the policy management people where those settings are controlled. Only once you're at the point of "I know how to set this via policy, how do I do it programmatically within my program?" do you have a good question for SO. For your example, the policy setting was a registry change; programmatically writing the registry is straightforward. – Ben Voigt Oct 03 '14 at 23:06
  • I have voted to reopen. – John Saunders Oct 03 '14 at 23:07
  • @BenVogit It's okay, it may not be worded as best as it could. In regards to the policy management people you refer to, this is for a personal project of mine to help the efficiency of my machine when out at University, so I'm the one that manages the system. – Liam Kelly Oct 03 '14 at 23:11

0 Answers0