Shut down PC at a determined time

Question

I have a software (calibre ebook manager) that fetches news at 6 am. I want to do the following :

1. Wake computer at 5:50 if not already on.(easily done in bios)
2. A scheduler opens calibre at 5:55 (done)
3. Calibre fetches the news as it starts up.

The above steps were easy to accomplish, but there are some problems. I want to shutdown the pc IF AND ONLY IF it was started at 5:50 automatically. If , for some reason, the pc was already on, I DO NOT WANT to shut it down.

How should that be done ?

Answer 1

Here is the AutoHotKey Script that does it. Make sure you run this script on boot. (Add a shortcut in startup folder)

;
; AutoHotkey Version: 1.x
; Language:       English
; Platform:       Win9x/NT
; Author:         AEonAX
;
#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.
if (A_Hour=5 and A_Min>55 and A_Min<59) ;Check if script starting time between 05:55 and 05:59 (24Hr clock)
{
Sleep,1000*60*5     ;Waits 5 Minutes
msgbox,4,,Will Shutdown in 60 seconds. Do you want to Stop the Shutdown.,60 ;Shows a msgbox for 60 seconds, If no response then shutsdown
ifmsgbox,Yes
    MsgBox Shutdown Cancelled
else
    Shutdown,1
}

Answer 2

Since the condition is to reset only if computer was booted automatically at 5:50 i guess one way would be to rely on boot time. You might adjust the minute timer to detect if when BIOS start computer at 5:50 what boot time is seen by system. But this a detail.

For the shutdown and detecting a boot time you can use following powershell script:

# GETTING BOOT TIME
$last_boot_date_time = Get-WmiObject win32_operatingsystem | select @{LABEL='LastBootUpTime';EXPRESSION={$_.ConverttoDateTime($_.lastbootuptime)}}

# SELECTING HOUR:MINUTES:SECONDS PART OF THE DATE
$last_boot_time_only = $last_boot_date_time | foreach { ([String]$_).split(" ")[1] }

# CHECKING IF BOOT TIME EQUALS 05:50
# IF SO - INITIATE SHUTDOWN
if ( $last_boot_time_only.split(":")[0] -eq "05" -and $last_boot_time_only.split(":")[1] -eq "50")
{ 
    Write-host "Shutting down in 10 seconds."; 
    shutdown -s -f -t 10
}

This is assuming you are using Windows with powershell version 1 or 2. If you have higher version of powershell, you might want to replace the command that gets the boot time with Get-CimInstance -ClassName win32_operatingsystem | select lastbootuptime

Answer 3

Try the below batch script, it rely's on the the system uptime. Run this when you think it is appropriate, with the Scheduler

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

for /f "tokens=2 delims=," %%a in ('systeminfo ^| findstr Boot ^| findstr System') do (
  set output=%%a
  set /a hrs=!output:~1,1!
  set mins=!output:~3,2!
 ::echo !output!
 ::echo !hrs! 
 ::echo !mins!
if !hrs! == 5 (
    if !mins! == 50 (
        shutdown -s -f -t 100
    )
) 

)

Well that is the idea, tweak as required

Explanation.

1. Extract the time that the computer was switched on,

systeminfo ^| findstr Boot ^| findstr System

systeminfo has a lot of information in there, So we are filtering only the parameter that we need we are looking for. eg,

C:\Users>systeminfo | findstr Boot |findstr System

System BootTime: 12/4/2014, 7:20:37 AM

2. Select the time field only that is separated by the comma

for /f "tokens=2 delims=," %%a in ('systeminfo ^| findstr Boot ^| findstr System') do ( set output=%%a

and in that entire string only select the 1st character ( 1 space), the 3rd and 4th character (2 space)

set /a hrs=!output:~1,1! set mins=!output:~3,2!

To give only the hr and the minute

3. IF function to shutdown if the time is a match.

if !hrs! == 5 (

  if !mins! == 50 (

      shutdown -s -f -t 100

PS: The bellow is the comment to see, if there is any mistake in the code,

::echo !output!

::echo !hrs!

::echo !mins!

Answer 4

try nncron for Windows http://www.nncron.ru/help/help.htm English version