Schedule machine to wake up

Question

What\'s the best way to programmatically cause a Windows XP (or above) machine to wake up at a specific time. (Ideally a lot like how Media Center can start up automatically

Answer 1

The task scheduler program in Win7, taskschd.msc (and I beleive XP as well) can be set to wake the system on different triggers. Those triggers can be schedule, time, event, etc.

In at least Win7, you need to set "Allow Wake Timers" to 'Enabled' for this to work. This setting is found under...

--> Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options
click - "Edit Plan Settings"
click - "Change advanced power setting"
expand - "Sleep"
Expand - "Allow Wake timers"