How to Set Wakeup Time for Laptop Computers in SCCM

SCCM’s power configuration options allow setting a wakeup time for computers, but only for desktops. Currently SCCM has no option to enable wakeup for laptops. The idea behind this is that a laptop can be in a bag and so should not be woken up automatically, but it would still be nice to have an option to enable this if you know for sure that your laptops will not be inside a laptop bag during the wakeup time, such as laptops used in lab environments.

Setting a wakeup time for laptops can be accomplished with a PowerShell script and a Task Scheduler task. This can be deployed with SCCM as a package targeting your laptop collections.

The first part is to enable wake timers using Powershell. SCCM’s power configuration options for a device collection can enable wake timers but again only for desktops, with no option at all to allow wake timers for laptops. This script can work with or without having an SCCM power configuration set for the device. As the device switches between peak and non-peak hours and therefore applies different SCCM power configurations automatically, it will still keep wake timers turned on when configured with this script. Here is the script (this one is floating around the internet – I didn’t write it), and you can selectively enable or disable wake timers for DC (on battery) and AC power (plugged in) by changing the $AllowWakeTimersGUI value for SETDCVALUEINDEX and SETACVALUEINDEX:

The second part is the Task Scheduler task to wakeup the computer. The task launches a command prompt window and then immediately exits. The key point is that the task is configured to wake the computer in order to run, and that can only happen if wake timers are enabled. However, this can be deployed before the wake timers powershell script above – it does not need to be chained or a prerequisite. You can create your own task and export is as an XML file, or use my XML file and change the time (mine also randomizes the wakeup time so that all the laptops don’t wake at the same time):

And here is the simple command to create the scheduled task using this XML file, assuming you name the file as indicated:

And if you need to delete this in the future, the command would be:

 

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