When I’m using my laptop at home or in the office I work from the mains, so I’m not worried about power saving. However, when I’m out and about battery life is of the utmost importance, so I’m keen to disable everything that’s not absolutely essential.

I would like to be able to deactivate features such as sound, my CD drive and other features when I’m running from the battery, so as to increase the length of time I can work for. Is there any way to automate this process using Windows XP Home Edition?

Dean Walters. via email

By creating hardware profiles for different purposes, you can help to improve the battery life of your laptop, as well as free up resources to help improve performance. While this is not entirely automated, once configured, when you switch on your computer, you will be asked which profile you would like to load. Use the following steps to get set up.

Step 1 Right-click My Computer and choose Properties to open the System Properties dialog box. When the dialog box appears, click the Hardware tab, then the Hardware Profiles button. You will see that there is currently one profile listed, labelled Profile 1. Select this in the list and click the Copy button to create a duplicate, and assign it a meaningful name such as ‘Battery power’.

Step 2 Use the arrow buttons to right of the dialog to move the profile you are going to use most frequently to the top of the list, thereby making it the default. Now use the small arrow buttons towards the bottom of the screen to indicate how long the profile selection menu should be displayed before the default profile is automatically loaded, before clicking OK followed by OK.

Step 3 Click OK followed by OK and then restart your computer and select the new created profile from the menu that’s displayed. As the new hardware profile is currently a duplicate of the default profile, you will notice that your computer functions as normal, as all hardware devices are enabled.

Step 4 Reopen the System Properties dialog box, click the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button. Right-click on an item you would like to disable in the new profile and select Properties. From the ‘Device usage’ menu select ‘Do not use this device in the current hardware profile (disable)’ and click OK. Repeat the process for any other devices you don’t need.

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