Any way to get Win10 to restart without manual intervention after a power outage?

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Is there any way I can tell Windows 10 to automatically restart where it was when a power outage occurred? It’s not “mission critical” but my machine is expected to be available 24×7. If I’m away from home and even a short power outage occurs (not uncommon in this area in the summer), this machine will be offline until I return (maybe a week or two later). It’s not important enough for me to invest in a UPS but it would be nice if Win10 could just take a power outage in stride.

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If I’m understanding your question, if your machine loses power without an intervening UPS, it’s just going to shut down ungracefully (not a good idea) and stay down until you power it back up. I’ve got an APC UPS which I can configure to either shut the machine down gracefully or hibernate during a power event; it’s configured to shut the machine down if power is out for more than 5 minutes. Once the machine is down, though, I don’t know what would automatically restart it once power is available. UPSs aren’t that expensive and if you’re just having brief power failures (10-15 minutes or so), a UPS will keep your machine running. Electronics generally can’t take power outages “in stride” unless there’s a battery involved somewhere.

Rob

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Rob
Had to chuckle at your OldMainFrameGuy handle. Thought for a second I was reading a post of mine. That handle would fit me to a T; particularly since I only used anything smaller than a mainframe when it was absolutely essential; e.g., IMLing a 9370 using OS/2 or after the last 3270 died. Those were the days!
Chuck

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Rob
Had to chuckle at your OldMainFrameGuy handle. Thought for a second I was reading a post of mine. That handle would fit me to a T; particularly since I only used anything smaller than a mainframe when it was absolutely essential; e.g., IMLing a 9370 using OS/2 or after the last 3270 died. Those were the days!
Chuck

Ah, those were the days. The other day I was wrestling with developing a source control procedure for USS files on z/OS and I couldn’t stop thinking back to 1973 when I was a wet-behind-the-ears COBOL programmer with a coding pad, happily sitting at an IBM 129 keypunch machine. Things were so much simpler – as long as you didn’t drop the deck of cards.

Rob

(PS: Just invest in an inexpensive UPS. As long as your outages are lasting minutes and not hours, you’ll be OK)

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Ah, those were the days. The other day I was wrestling with developing a source control procedure for USS files on z/OS and I couldn’t stop thinking back to 1973 when I was a wet-behind-the-ears COBOL programmer with a coding pad, happily sitting at an IBM 129 keypunch machine. Things were so much simpler – as long as you didn’t drop the deck of cards.

Rob

(PS: Just invest in an inexpensive UPS. As long as your outages are lasting minutes and not hours, you’ll be OK)

I agree with Rob, a UPS would be good anyway as it keeps things going even with power drops as well as outages. And if the power fails for longer than the UPS can keep going, it will gracefully (and safely) shut down the PC. Then you wouldn’t run the risk of damage if there is a power cut. And if you can make use of the suggestions about restarting, you should have what you want.

@Rob – I coded in Fortran – and I soon learned to number my cards just in case of them being dropped! In tens so you could easily add lines of code – 100s if you had a very large program. But then I discovered we had TSO and I became a fervent user of that – then ISPF when it was introduced. Coders today don’t know they’re living – write the code, run it, see what happens – I had to dry run the code.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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A laptop would be better in these circumstances.

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MartinM
Yours was the shortest reply and, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit, described the solution I should have considered before posting the question. As it happens, I am using a desktop at this moment and to develop the app in question. And my laptop goes with me when I am away from home. My wife’s, on the other hand, never leaves the house . . . . (she never sees this forum :evilgrin:)

As a firm believer in Occum’s Razor and the KISS principle, I’m thinking this app will do very nicely on a laptop. Thanks for the suggestion.
Chuck

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I like both Occam and Kiss !

Almost always it’s worth taking one step back before trying to go forward – much as you do after walking into a brick wall :rolleyes:

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Does your router have a Wake-on-LAN function sufficiently sophisticated to run on a schedule (say every hour) to target your PC? Of course, if the PC is awake no further waking occurs!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Returning from a power outage is generally a hardware task which you see in servers. Normal machines do have remote power up but it is by deliberate command, e.g. Wake On Lan or USB. The easiest method would be a UPS configured for graceful shutdown and re-start on power up. See this article. http://www.technewsworld.com/story/78930.html

cheers, Paul

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This is primarily a BIOS/UEFI function rather than Windows.

Most (if not all) of my recent motherboards have an option within advanced power managemen (APM) on what to do after power loss with the options being power on, power off & retain previous state.

If the option to power on is chosen AND Windows is set to autologon AND all required services are configured to run on startup that may meet your needs.

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If windows itself needs to shutdown you might want to check the auto restart setting as well as Bios/Uefi settings:46977-Capture:cheers:

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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If windows itself needs to shutdown you might want to check the auto restart setting as well as Bios/Uefi settings:

I think that could only be relevant for a Windows failure, not a power failure.

At what stage after a power failure could Windows decide it should restart?

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I think that could only be relevant for a Windows failure, not a power failure.

At what stage after a power failure could Windows decide it should restart?

I am on unsure territory here buuut; if a brown out causes a windows corruption maaaybe it will decide to shut down.

If I am standing too far in left field please correct me!
:cheers:

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I am on unsure territory here buuut; if a brown out causes a windows corruption maaaybe it will decide to shut down.

If I am standing too far in left field please correct me!
:cheers:

I suppose that’s a possibility. But I thought it would have been taken care of by a UPS, which is really required for proper shutdown and restart after a blackout.

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He does not have a UPS which would allow a ‘proper shut down’. If I expected/wanted my machine to have maximum uptime a USP would be one of my first purchases surely! (That said from experience UPSes always seem to fail when needed :(:, I can’t count the number of times I have had to baby an Inkjet printer back to life that was on an UPS that failed when a power outage occurred. Maybe it saved the electronics from some thing worse, hard to tell.)

:cheers:

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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The Razor belongs to [William of] Ockham or Occam!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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[bbearren]

FWIW, in BIOS and UEFI Power Settings there is a preference for behavior after losing power. I’ve always chosen “Last state”. With that setting, if the PC was shut down, it remains shut down. If it was running, it will restart and Windows will reboot to the logon screen.

My main reason for a UPS is to control those restarts in the event of a power bump, which occurs frequently in my neck of the woods during those central Florida thunderstorms. Unsaved work is lost, etc. I’ve never had a problem with the PC rebooting into Windows. Access to shared folders doesn’t depend on the PC being logged on, Task Scheduler continues to function if it’s setup to run whether the user is logged on or not. All my Task Scheduler tasks are set to run under SYSTEM, so that’s never an issue, either.

If you’re set for auto-logon, then that user will be logged on after the power returns and Windows reboots.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

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• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by bbearren.

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Technological advances are not always better. 🙂

cheers, Paul

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