How to execute a script on sleep, hibernate, resume, and shutdown

Question

I keep alot of my classwork documents hosted on dropbox as well as my personal site for remote storage. This helps alot since I switch between an iPad, laptop and desktop, so there are no worries about my documents being out of touch.

Problem is, this solution relies on me remembering to execute the sync program (synctoy) for win7, so I'd like a solution to do this automatically. I've found some scripting help that should work on bootup, but how can I get the script to execute on entering sleep and hibernate, resuming from both, as well as executing before shutdown.

Answer 1

Try this when the computer returns from Hibernate or Sleep Mode

Begin the Task: On an event
Setting Basic
Log:  System
Source: Power-Troubleshooter
Event ID: 1
The system has resumed from sleep.

When you put the computer in Hibernate or Sleep Mode

Begin the Task: On an event
Setting Basic
Log:  System
Source: Kernel-Power
Event ID: 42
The system is entering sleep.

Answer 2

You can create a task that uses any of the following options as triggers for the Task Scheduler in Windows 7:

• On Schedule
• On Logon
• At Startup
• On Idle
• On An Event
• On connection to User Session
• On disconnect from User Session
• On Workstation lock
• On Workstation unlock

There's lots to work with there, I'd be looking at the on Idle, on Workstation lock and On Workstation Unlock triggers. That's probably your best bet.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

When I wanted it set up, I wanted a very low-latency approach so I could get a splash screen going. For task scheduler you want to set the trigger to "on an event" then set to custom rather than basic, then edit the query manually under event trigger's XML tab.

I tried this script for XML:

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0" Path="System">
    <Select Path="System">*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power'] and (Level=4 or Level=0) and (EventID=42)]]</Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

If you need the application to start up in a snap, this is the best way to do it.

Answer 4

Having tried some of the prescribed methods in here, I was never able to get a script to run on sleep. The built-in Windows Task Scheduler facilities just didn't fix it.

I found a small open source utility called "Power Triggers" or "Windows 7 Suspend/Resume Control". Despite not being well-polished or currently maintained, I found this tool to work on Windows 10 without issues. However, to run a script easily on suspend or resume, you have to use version 1.01 (aka release 1 in the archive), and not the latest version.

Answer 5

What you can do is create a batch file to do everything you need to before shutting down or hibernating the machine.

Mind you you should run the apps with "Start / wait xxx.exe" so the batch file will wait for the command to complete and exit and not reach the shutdown part before other tasks are complete.

The last command in that file should be "shutdown xxx yyy " where xxx and yyy are the parameters for the shutdown command. Then you can just run this batch file instead of using any other shutting down command / application.

Answer 6

There is an AutoHotkey script that attempts to solve this here