The most annoying part of using a PC, is surely booting it up in the morning for the days use.

After seeing this software reviewed by Lifehacker a while back, I realised I could start my PC in the morning in around 30 seconds as opposed to, in some cases, 10 minutes.

Now, I know the PC is not technically off whilst Boot Snooze is in use.  It’s in hibernation mode or Standby which puts the PC in a very low power state.  It barely even draws whilst it’s in Hibernation.

So the idea here, is to use Boot Snooze last thing in the day to reboot your PC. Once it’s been rebooted, Boot Snooze will automatically start a countdown timer (previously specified) to put your PC into a low power state.  During the countdown, we’ll set Windows to automatically start programs that we always find ourselves using.  I find the first 3 programs I always start are; Outlook, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, so we’ll use those in this example.  Once they have opened, Boot Snooze will put your PC into the low power state.

When you start your PC out of standby or hibernation in the morning, it will take around 30 seconds to get to the desktop where your programs are already opened ready and waiting.  Much better than waiting a matter of minutes and then having to open the programs up one by one.

So, here’s a walk through guide on how to start your PC the smart way.

Step 1.

The first thing we need to do is make sure hibernation is turned on in Windows.

Press the WinKey+R, type cmd and click OK.

When the command prompt window opens, type;

powercfg /hibernate on and press Enter.

Step 2.

What we also need to do is make sure your user account is set to automatically logon, otherwise the programs won’t automatically open.

See here to get to the Advanced User Account Options.

When you have, under the Users tab, uncheck the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer check box and click Apply.

Enter your password, confirm it and click OK.

Step 3 (Optional).

Upon resuming from the low power state, your PC will by default, ask for login credentials.

If you want to go straight to your desktop without the login prompt; click the Start Menu and type power

Click on Change what the power buttons do from the search results.

In the next window, under Password protection on wakeup, check the Don’t require a password radio button and click Save changes.

Step 4.

Open an Explorer window and in the address bar, type shell:startup.  This folder is where you can place shortcuts to items you wish to start-up automatically.

Open another Explorer window and navigate to the location of the programs you want to automatically startup.  This would typically be the %ProgramFiles% location.

Select the program you want to automatically start and then right-click, drag and drop into the shell:startup window.

A small context menu will show.  Click on Create shortcuts here.

Your startup folder should look something like this.

Step 5.

We need to head over to Skwire Empire and grab a copy of Boot Snooze.

Extract the three files in the zip folder and put them into a regular folder.

Select BootSnooze.exe, hold down Alt+Double click.

The Properties window will pop up. Under the General tab at the bottom of the properties window next to Security, click the Unblock button and the click Apply.

Do the same for BootSnooze.dcupdate

Step 6.

Now open up BootSnooze.exe.  In the Options section, set how long the PC waits before rebooting in minutes, set how long after rebooting the PC, it waits to hibernate or, if you prefer, Standby.

When you’ve set your timer, click Restart then Hibernate or Restart then Sleep and the PC will reboot when the timer has finished.  Wait for the reboot, watch it automatically log on, watch your programs open, then when the timer has finished again, watch it go into the specified low power state.

Wait a couple of minutes or so for it to power down, then wake it up to confirm everything has gone as planned.  If not, head over to the forums for some help.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is how to start your PC the smart way.

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