Boot Snooze, a freeware app by Donation Coder member Skwire, has been designed to bring the best of both worlds together. It combines a restart of the computer with an automated switch to hibernation or standby.

Here is how it works. You download Boot Snooze from the developer web page and unpack it to a local directory. The following options are then displayed in the program interface.

You can enable auto-login in case it is not enabled on the computer. For that, you need to enter a username and password of the Windows user that you want to log in automatically. The program did not detect the auto-login settings on the test system correctly, users without a password should be fine without enabling auto-login in the application.

The two options on the left are used to configure the delay before and after the reboot. Remember that the program will first reboot the computer and load Windows again before it will put the operating system into hibernate or standby mode.

A click on Restart then Hibernate or Restart then Standby starts the process. The default wait time is 10 minutes after the reboot before the computer is put into hibernation or standby.

You need to make sure that hibernation is enabled, which you can do under Control Panel > Power Options > Change when the computer sleeps > Advanced Options.

You can alternatively enable it from the command line by opening a command prompt with administrative privileges and entering the command powercfg /hibernate on.

Some Windows users may get an UAC prompt after the restart of the computer. They may need to tweak their UAC settings to fully automate the process.

The program displays a countdown and an option to switch to the selected computer state right away.

Book Snooze supports command line parameters. You find detailed instructions on the project homepage.

The core benefit of the program is the ability to combine a system restart with hibernation or standby. The ability to auto-login is a step in the right direction, the UAC problem on newer versions of Windows is one that still needs to be addressed to make the program universally usable.

Interested users can download Boot Snooze from Skwire’s home at DCmembers.

The problem with these settings is that they sometimes kick in even if the computer is not idle. We have talked about the definition of idle in Windows before. Basically, it may be possible that programs are still running when Windows makes the decision to change the system state.

This can be problematic if it is important that the program keeps running, which it obviously cannot if the system goes into standby or hibernation.

Don’t Sleep is a tiny portable application with which users can block certain system state changes.

The program supports the blocking of the following state changes:

• Standby, hybrid-standby, hibernation
• Shutdown
• Log-off
• Screensaver, turn off monitor

When Don’t Sleep is running it will automatically block attempts by the system to switch to any of the blocked system states or modes.

The portable application can be launched directly after download and unpacking. Non-German users need to click on the #Lng button to change the display language to English or French.

Don’t Sleep comes with a timer which can be configured to kick off at a specific time. This timer can then exit the Don’t Sleep program to remove the blocking, or to shutdown, hibernate or standby the PC.

The options provide settings to define when and how the program starts. The only other available functions are direct links to system tools like the power configuration, user accounts or system configuration.

Don’t Sleep can be very handy for users who regularly experience automatic changes of the system state in Windows.

This tool can be interesting for users who regularly use sleep mode or hibernation instead of turning off their computer completely after work. That’s only one possibility though. The software program can also be used to run system updates, system optimization or other tasks that are best executed when no one is accessing the computer.

Wake Up On Standby is a portable utility compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and additional former Microsoft operating systems. It uses a five step configuration procedure to exactly time and configure the automatic sleep mode wake up procedure:

Specifies the exact time the computer should wake up from sleep mode. It contains additional settings like turning on the computer monitor and resuming the screen saver, repairing network and performing the tasks if the computer wakes up early.
Specify programs, batch files or websites that should be executed after waking up the computer from sleep mode automatically.
Specify the action to be performed after finishing the tasks. This includes putting the computer back into sleep mode, shutting down the computer, logging a user off or waiting and doing nothing. Wake Up On Standby can execute another application or batch file before performing the action.
Specify the days and weeks the task should be performed.
Activate the process

The configuration can be saved as a bat file which is useful if Wake Up On Standby should be run with the same settings again or if the settings should be copied to another computer with a similar setup.