Windows 10: Export and Import Power Plan in Windows 10

How to: Export and Import Power Plan in Windows 10


Information A power plan is a collection of hardware and system settings that manages how computers use and conserve power. A power plan is also known as a power scheme. You can create custom power plans that are optimized for specific computers.

By default, Windows 10 includes three built-in power plans: Balanced, Power Saver, and High Performance. You can create new plans that are based on the existing plans, or create a new power plan from scratch.

You can export a power plan and all its settings to a .pow file, then be able to import the .pow file to restore the power plan and it's settings on any Windows PC.

This tutorial will show you how to export (backup) and import (restore) a power plan along with its settings in Windows 10.

You must be signed in as an administrator to be able export and import power plans.

CONTENTS:

• Option One: To Export a Power Plan
• Option Two: To Import a Power Plan

OPTION ONE [/i] To Export a Power Plan
1. Open an elevated command prompt.

2. Copy and paste either command below into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter to see a list of all existing power plans on the PC along with their GUID. (see screenshot below)
*Arrow powercfg /L

OR

*Arrow powercfg /List




3. Make note of the GUID of the power plan (ex: "My Custom Plan 1") you want to export. (see screenshot above)

4. Type the command below into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter to export the power plan. (see screenshot below)
*Arrow powercfg -export "%UserProfile%\Desktop\PowerPlanBackup.pow" GUID



Note Substitute GUID in the command above with the actual GUID from step 3 of the power plan you want to export.

For example:
powercfg -export "%UserProfile%\Desktop\PowerPlanBackup.pow" 48569655-ebee-4428-b456-512f207cddc2




5. A PowerPlanBackup.pow file will be saved to your desktop as the backup of the power plan. You can rename this file to anything you like, but it must keep the .pow file extension. Save the file to where you like to keep it at.

6. When finished, you can close the command prompt if you like.





OPTION TWO [/i] To Import a Power Plan
1. Open an elevated command prompt.

2. Type the command below into the elevated command prompt, and press Enter to import the power plan. (see screenshot below)
*Arrow powercfg -import "Full path of .pow file"



Note Substitute Full path of .pow file in the command above with the actual full path of the .pow file of the power plan you exported in Option One.

For example:
powercfg -import "%UserProfile%\Desktop\PowerPlanBackup.pow"




4. When finished, you can close the command prompt if you like.

5. Users on the PC will now be able to select the imported power plan as their active power plan.

That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to See Your Current Active Power Plan Scheme in Windows 10
• How to Choose a Power Plan in Windows 10
• How to Create a Custom Power Plan in Windows 10
• How to Change Power Plan Settings in Windows 10
• How to Rename a Power Plan in Windows 10
• How to Delete a Power Plan in Windows 10
• How to Reset and Restore Power Plans to Default Settings in Windows 10
• How to Add or Remove Power Options Context Menu in Windows 10
• How to Specify a Default Active Power Plan in Windows 10
• How to Add or Remove Ultimate Performance Power Plan in Windows 10
• How to Restore Missing Default Power Plans in Windows 10
• How to View All Power Plan Settings in a Text File in Windows

:)

 

Windows 10 Screen Timeout

My IT Department is experiencing an intermittent issue with the power options in Windows 10. This is random to any of our Dell computer models and it can occur on one computer and the computer beside it is working properly
and they are both the same model. When screen timeout is set to 10 minutes on charger or not, the screen timeout will not work but if set to 1 minute it will timeout in 10-15 minutes. The issue does not appear to be user specific profile since newly created
profiles experience the same issue. I have tried using Microsoft FixIT power option troubleshooting. No luck. I even export the power plan from a working computer and import it to the issue computer but the issue still appears.

***Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.***

 

saving websites to favorites in Windows 10

IE favorites? If you had used the Export option in IE to export favorites to a html file, you can import them using the same way in IE (IE File menu > Import and export) in Windows 10.

 

Hello 91fw, *Smile

If you have an existing power plan with the same name as the imported power plan, it would replace it.

If you like, you can use the command below to list all of your power plan GUID numbers.

powercfg /List

Afterwards, you could use the command to output the contents of a power plan to a .txt file on your desktop. You would substitute GUID in the command below with the actual GUID of the power plan you want the details of.

POWERCFG /QUERY GUID >"%UserProfile%\Desktop\PowerPlan.txt"

 

Brilliant.
Long ago I disabled hibernate and fast boot. In advanced power setting GUI, in that little window with many settings, hibernation is nowhere to be seen, not in SLEEP, not anywhere.
I expected to see it there and to be set to NEVER or zero or false.
Hence my question, and I think I see they do have many variants of hibernation in the .txt output. They just hide it from us. I hate it when M$ does this sort of thing.
What would we do without your guidance, Brink? Thank you *Smile

 

You're most welcome. I'm glad it could help. *Smile

 

Brink, After upgrade to 1703, I got hit with screen going black and harddrive turning off 2 min of inattention, so I ask:
what does the "Possible Settings increment: 0x00000001" mean? in this context

I ask because fiddling with that increment (change 1 to 2) fixes the unwanted sleep after 2 minutes. It looks to me like it's unhide the setting in advanced power list, but I can't be sure.

I was afraid to import the settings from previous version of windows.

 

Hello 91fw, *Smile

The "Possible Settings increment" value lets you know in what increment you change the power plan setting with.

The tutorial below can help give more details about this power plan setting.

*Arrow Change System Unattended Sleep Timeout in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

 

Thanks, for now. I'm unclear why changing it to 2 in the registry made it possible for me to finally fix the unwanted frequent sleep state.
Also how is that SYSTEM unattended timeout different from SLEEP - The link you posted (thanks!) is about tasks. I have none. No, I have a million of whatever M$ put in and I don't wade through them at all.
Oh, this was the registry place:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Power > PowerSettings > 238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20 > 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0
Attributes.

 

I'm not sure why that would have helped with the hard drive turning off either. Usually, you would use this below for that.

Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

...and this below for turning off the display.

Change Turn off Display after Time in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

 

I now understand why it worked because I found
Add System unattended sleep timeout to Power Options in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials where you showed the meaning of 1 and 2.
Brink, your tutorials are fabulous once you know few magic incantations for searching.

 

Sorry for the necroposting, but I'd like to thank Brink for another great tutorial, and say that you can just type "powercfg l" to see the list of existing power plans.