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When watching a movie on my PC (in a flash player widget in FireFox on Windows Vista), I would like to be able to tell my PC not to switch the screen off or put the screensaver on. Now I can go into power options and change these settings, and set them back after the movie, but I was wondering if there is some kind of utility that I can one-click to say - no screensaver or auto power down for next 2/3 hours?

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Desktop PC? or laptop running on battery? – quack quixote Oct 3 '09 at 21:26
laptop, but with charger plugged in (although I forgot to turn it on initially, so just 5 minutes into my movie before the screen turned off) – Mark Heath Oct 3 '09 at 22:14

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You could just set a power profile, or set the existing "High performance" setting, to not show screensaver. So rather than changing a bunch of setting, all you do is change from a balanced power mode to a high performance one. You could change back afterwards, but I think that the balanced will be in place on restart.

Using Win + b to get to system tray, right arrow and enter and up (or down) would change the setting more quickly. You could set a Autohotkey script to automate this, perhaps with a "if [media] window active" rule.

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thanks, I like this idea & have created a "Watching Movies" plan. Its not obvious how I get my new plan to appear in the list of 3 shown when you click the battery icon. – Mark Heath Oct 3 '09 at 22:27
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XP's power management had a "Presentation" mode that did basically what you're looking to do (disable turning monitors off and disable system standby). i know Vista power management is pretty different but maybe there's a similar mode? – quack quixote Oct 3 '09 at 22:42
Mark, it seems that only 3 power plans can be shown with the battery icon, only 2 in my W7. So maybe adapting one of the existing plans would be the way to go rather than creating a fourth. – outsideblasts Oct 3 '09 at 23:08
quack, there is a presentation mode, which can be accessed from the Windows Mobility Center. I might try that on the next movie, as it looks like exactly what I am after. – Mark Heath Oct 4 '09 at 6:24
up vote 2 down vote

I believe this is what you're looking for: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/create-shortcut-icon-to-disable-enable-the-screensaver/

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nice. doesn't get the power management out of the way tho, so only half a solution. – quack quixote Oct 3 '09 at 21:31
yes, that does look useful. would be nice if there was the same thing for power management. – Mark Heath Oct 3 '09 at 22:21

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