Native solutions for activating Windows sleep settings

The following solutions can help you activate sleep settings on groups of Windows computers and monitors.  It is critically important, however, to ensure that sleeping computers can still receive administrative software updates (such as Windows security patches and antivirus definitions) prior to activating sleep settings.

1. Microsoft Group Policy provides a way to centrally manage Windows power management features.
2. Microsoft Group Policy Preferences provide a way to centrally activate monitor and computer power management features, but they can be changed by the user.
3. Powercfg.exe can be used in a logon script to configure power management settings. This method requires enhancing registry rights, which can be configured through Group Policy.
4. Windows Task Scheduler can be used to put PCs into sleep mode.
5. If you replicate hard drives from a template image when you upgrade operating systems and/or roll out new hardware, enabling sleep settings in the template image will ensure that all computers receive these settings.