What is the actual command Windows 8 uses to put the computer into Sleep mode?

Question

shutdown.exe shortcuts work just fine to do Shutdown and Restart:

C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 00

C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /r /t 00

I don't want to do Hibernate, but I would like to do Standby like in Windows XP, with one double-click from my Desktop.

In Win 8, it takes more effort than necessary to click to Sleep.

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So, I've read that you have to use the following rundll32 command to do Standby, and that Hibernation has to be off, so I made the following into a .bat file with a shortcut to it. It still requires me to press the power button to turn the computer on, as opposed to tapping a key on the keyboard, or moving the mouse:

C:\Windows\System32\powercfg -hibernate off

C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0

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PsShutdown works great for all three: Shutdown, Restart, and Standby.
I'm currently using PsShutdown v2.52:

"C:\Program Files\Standby\psshutdown.exe" -k -t 0

"C:\Program Files\Standby\psshutdown.exe" -r -t 0

"C:\Program Files\Standby\psshutdown.exe" -d -t 0

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I would just like to know what is the actual command that Windows 8 uses to put the computer into Sleep mode?

Is it a line command? Where do you find it? How do you figure out what it is?

I think I would use a line command, because it would be simpler than needing to use another program.

Windows 8 is getting the job done somehow. Maybe it really is more complicated to do, than using a couple of line commands.

Answer 1

I decided that I will just use Classic Shell - the current version is 3.6.2 - it works great

Answer 2

I also tried:

C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0

but it does shutdown instead of sleep/standby

BUT thanks to PsShutdown.exe as mentioned above with a specific switch:

"C:\Program Files\Standby\psshutdown.exe" -d -t 0

IT WORKS LIKE STANDBY or like Sleep as it should.

THanks

Answer 3

Sounds like you might be expecting things to work like Linux.

The command line is well respected through most Linux programs and indeed, most of the time, many programs and dialog boxes are in fact constructing a command which is then executed - what this is really is loading an executable with specifying its "command line" arguments.

Windows isn't rooted in the same tradition and generally when something Windows has "exposed" functionality it's through DLLs or COM interfaces, or more recently .NET objects. So rather than invoking a command, Windows is far more likely calling a DLL function (by ordinal in some instances and NOT name), a COM or .NET object method.

This stuff is exposed to you, a non-programmer user, via rundll32 (but usually not well documented), the COM API (better be prepared to read a lot of docs, understand object oriented programming) which is accessible via Windows Script Host (another layer of componentry further made accessible to the end user via wscript.exe and/or cscript.exe) and .NET (break out Powershell and Visual Studio for this one). Many of the control panel applets and such in explorer.exe are likely making system calls, DLL calls, or COM calls directly.

Sounds messy, and it is. The good news is with the introduction of Powershell there's been a steady trend towards "cmdlets" being available within in that do practically anything and finally give Windows a consistent, rich commandline environment. I don't know the Powershell command to put Windows to sleep but I'm sure there is one.

I could be horribly wrong/incomplete about any or most of this (IANA Windows programmer), I'm sure others will comment and you should read those comments.