Getting Power Options settings on a remote PC (C#)

Question

I'm trying to obtain the following information regarding Power Options on a remote PC via C#:

• Time to sleep
• Time to turn off display
• Time to turn off hard disk on battery
• Time to turn off hard disk when plugged in
• Sleep after on battery
• Sleep after when plugged in
• Hibernate after on battery
• Hibernate after when plugged in

I'm not looking to change those settings: just reading them.
The registries in CURRENTUSER\\Control Panel\\PowerCfg were less than helpful, as none seem to point to the settings above.
I also tried using PowerEnumerate(), but couldn't find a way to make that function work on a remote computer.

How would I go about obtaining the value of these settings from a remote computer?

Answer 1

The scheme in the registry is (unnecessarily) complicated, however:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings

contains GUID values for the different settings, and the default values for AC and DC for the stock plans.

The key

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes

contains any modifications made to the Power Schemes settings under the GUIDs for each setting group and setting.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\ActivePowerScheme

contains the GUID of the currently active Power Scheme.

I would certainly not change the settings via the registry, but I believe you could read them.

For example, if your active Power Scheme is High Performance, then ActivePowerScheme contains 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c . If you look in PowerSchemes\\8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c and see

0012ee47-9041-4b5d-9b77-535fba8b1442
    6738e2c4-e8a5-4a42-b16a-e040e769756e
        ACSettingIndex  REG_DWORD  0x00000e10 (3600)

then you know the time to turn off the hard disks on AC power is 3600 seconds or 60 minutes.

Answer 2

you need to make use of Power Management Api, here is the example class PowerManager.cs and also look into Power Scheme Management MSDN

Edit: Something that you are seeking to capture the details from the remote PC, you can install your program in window service through which you can read the updates.