Is there any way I can force my computer to shut down after a certain length of time?

Factual Questions
1

I am trying to record something off of a tape player, and I would like to let the program run while I sleep. However, If I do so, the program will just continue running indefinitely until someone manually stops it. So unless anyone know of any sound recording free or shareware with a timer, I would like to know how to force the computer itself to shutdown.

Unfortunately hibernate or standby modes will not activate if a program is writing something to the hard drive.

2

What OS?

3

I know you can on a Mac (under energy saver control panel-- under schedule (in 9)), but I bet you aren’t on a Mac (purely a statistical guess).

4

Woops, Win XP.

5

How’s your coding experience? :slight_smile:

6

There are plenty of shareware/freeware utilities out there to do that - for example: http://www.tucows.com/system/shutdown95.html

(don’t worry about the 95 in the URL, there are utils for all versions of Windows.)

7

Found several great little programs that did just as I asked.

I then realised that the recorded file will be lost unless it is manually saved.
:smack:

8

Look into software the records mouse macros. You can set one up that will wait some number of minutes, then click your program’s end/save/exit. Then another time-delay program to shut down the computer.

Although, if you just set your computer’s power settings to power down the hard-drive and whatnot after a certain period of inactivity, and you switch off your monitor, power consumption can be pretty trivial.

9

Look into software the records mouse macros. You can set one up that will wait some number of minutes, then click your program’s end/save/exit. Then another time-delay program to shut down the computer.

Although, if you just set your computer’s power settings to power down the hard-drive and whatnot after a certain period of inactivity, and you switch off your monitor, power consumption can be pretty trivial.

10

There are audio recorder programs that can be programmed like a VCR. You could set it to record for one hour, and set the shutdown utility to kick in after that. I used to use such a software to record a radio show but I can’t remember the name, sorry. You can do a web search and find a few.