I have a personal computer. I am running windows 98. Most of the time, my computer is off. I want it to come on at 4:30pm on Fridays. How do I do this?
How is your compter “off”? Is the power off or is it on standby?
I just leave mine on and turn the monitor off.
If you turn it completely off then you need some sort of an AC power switch with a timer. Then that will only put power to the computer, not turn it on.
By off I mean that the computer is off, there is power supplied through the cord to the computer, but the computer is turned off.
so, I kind of need a timer that will replace the switch. This much is obvious, but where do I find these things?
You might get lucky. Some computers have a BIOS setting that will turn the computer on at a certain time. Look under Power Management in the BIOS at startup to see if that is an option.
If not, this is a harder problem than it first appears. I would just leave the compuetr turned on all the time like a lot of people do.
A $6 timer from Home Depot and a Bios Setting change.
Set the Time to 4:PM.
Look in Bios setting for Power settings. Usually a setting for Turn on when sense power.
I use this on all my PC’s at home (not the timer) the Turn on return of power setting. Power is through a surge protector. When I turn off PC, I turn off Surge. When I turn on Surge, PC starts.
Timer should accomplish same trick but of course $6 timers will be +/- 10 minutes on time. If need accuracy, go to Radio Shack for a digital time with battery backup built in.
Oops, only on Fridays, you will need an expensive times that can be set for entire week.
I use a program called *Auto Power-on & Shut-down * to do this. It works well, but your BIOS must be able to support it (most do).
I seem to recall people around here being nervous about the quality of the power those things put out - is it possible it could send a surge to the computer or something when it clicks on?
Possible of course, but not likely. Besides I would still plug the PC into a surge.
But the Timer won’t work because he wants only Fridays. He needs a more expensive timer system, which should eliminate the surge concern anyway.
1 more Problem the $6 timers are not grounded, Grounded ones are more.
So my advise was doubly wrong. :wally
Go with a high quality digital timer. Radio Shack use to carry these but more like $40. Ensure it is 3-prong. May be able to find a 2 outlet version also.
Why don’t you just leave your PC powered up all the time, and then just use the Win98 built-in scheduler to start whatever program you want at 4:30pm on Fridays?
The cot to buy a good quality timer will be more than a couple years’ worth of the electricity used to run the PC. And many experts suggest that leaving the PC on all the time reduces wear-n-tear on the machine. Cecil says it’s about a wash either way: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mturnoff.html
It might possibly make a tiny surge or something, but the power supply in the computer can certainly deal with anything a timer could dish out. Computer power supplies are designed to deal with a fairly large level of power weirdness coming in.
Ok, after further deliberation, leaving the computer turned on and using the power features is a better way to go.
This leads to the next question:
Programs like Trend Micro’s PC Cillin can be set to start scanning at a certain time, but programs like Ad-Aware and Spy-Bot Search and Destroy require user input to make them start scanning, so the question is how can I get these programs to start running at 4:00 on Fridays?
In Spybot 1.3 go to MODE - Advanced and turn on advanced mode.
Then go to SETTINGS - SCHEDULER.
Click ADD. Should tell you that some settings haven’t been set and you need to set them.
Click EDIT. Brings up a properties window with TASK, SCHEDULE and SETTINGS tabs. Click the SCHEDULE tab. Click the “New” button to add a new task to your windows scheduler. You can set properties in there, and in “Settings”. Be sure to hit “Apply” before closing that window.
Erm…I just realized this is for Windows XP and you have 98. See if the process is the same for 98…
According to info I gathered from Googling “schedule adaware”, you can’t schedule a scan with AdAware SE Personal, only the paid versions.