Windows 2000 continues to provide support for reducing power consumption via both Advanced Power Management (APM, or older hardware-based power management) and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI, or newer power management coordinated by the OS). Power consumption options are configured via the Power Options program in Control Panel. What you should know about power management in Windows 2000:
- APM is only supported on Windows 2000 Professional – not on any of the Server products. Windows 2000 supports APM 1.2.
- In order to configure APM on a system, it must have an APM-compliant BIOS, and you must be a member of the administrators group. If you don’t have an APM-based BIOS, you won’t see the APM tab in Power Options.
- If you’re having problems relating to APM, use the Apmstat.exe tool, which is available if you install the Support Tools from the Windows 2000 CD.
- You can configure different hardware schemes, to control what elements will be power-managed, and when. You can also set up custom schemes, with the settings you specify. An example of a built-in scheme is Presentation, where the computer will not power down the monitor, hard disks, or go into standby.
To warn that batteries are running low, configure an alarm in the Alarms tab of Power Options (only seen on systems with batteries). - Hibernate mode can be enabled, and allows you to save the current system state (the contents of RAM) to the hard disk and put your computer into a low power standby. Doing this allows you to restart your system to the exact settings where you left off, by reloading the contents of the file into memory (gets you up and running more quickly). Note that although it suggests that computer will be totally powered down, it is still possible that a scheduled task (for example) could re-power the computer. As such you should know that if you are flying, having your computer in hibernate mode does not meet airline requirements – you still need to do a proper, complete shut down.