is there a way to force a computer into sleep mode at certain times?

Question

for example, to save electricity. Could you make a domain policy that makes a pc go to sleep between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am. You can always turn it back on. It just goes to sleep unless it's being used or it gets woke up.

Thank you.

EDIT: Sorry, they are all Windows machines. XP, Vista, and Windows 7, but mostly XP Pro. Lots of machines.

Answer 1

I assume you are using Windows, here is a command line that will send the PC to sleep

rundll32 powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState

you could either create a batch file to remotely execute this command on all pc at a certain time using psexec, and then another batch file to send a wol command out when you want them woken up.

Alternatively you could schedule these two functions manually on each machine

Answer 2

Depends on the OS. For XP, Energy Star has something called EZ GPO to manage power. I believe Vista and Windows 7 have GPOs for this.

EnergyStar