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http://www.ho wto geek.co m/58109/ho w-to -lo wer-the-critical-battery-level-to -1-in-windo ws-7/

WINDOWS

With specif ic hardware conf igurations, Windows ref uses to let you change the Critical Battery Level below a specif ic point. If youve got a big battery, this prevents you f rom using every last bit of juice. T hankf ully, there are two easy workarounds. Weve already shown you How To Tweak the Low Battery Action on Your Windows 7 Laptop, but Windows can be stubborn. On my particular laptop, it wont let me set the critical battery level to anything below 5%; it changes back to 5% as soon as I click something else. On my netbook, thats close to 20 minutes Im missing out on, and it takes less than 30 seconds to hibernate so I know I would be f ine with 1%. Depending on your specif ic hardware this number may be dif f erent, or you may be lucky and not have this problem at all; it appears that many Macbooks running Windows 7 dont have this issue. If youre like me, however, there are two solutions you can choose f rom: one thats easy and another thats slightly more involved.

Pull t he Bat t ery

Plug in your laptop so that its drawing power f rom the wall. You can pull the battery on the live system this way without any problems. Once the battery is removed, you should be able to change the critical battery level like normal, only this time your settings wont change back. When youre done, just put the battery back in.

T his doesnt appear to work on all systems. If you tried this and it didnt work, the next solution will.

Use Powercf g.exe

If your laptop doesnt have a user-replaceable battery, or f or whatever reason you cant remove the battery while the system is on, youre not out of hope yet. We can set the lower percentage manually using the command-line utility Powercf g.exe, so go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt. First, we need the GUID of your power scheme. Input the f ollowing command:

powercfg.exe l

T hats an l as in list, which is what powercf g will do.

Your currently active power plan will be marked with an asterisk. I only ever use the f irst one, but if you switch power plans, youll need to go through this process f or each one. Find the one you want to change in the list, right-click, and select Mark. Now you can select the long alphanumeric string with your mouse cursor, and then hit the Enter key to copy it. You should paste this in a notepad window, because weve got more to copy. Next, we need the GUID of the subgroup and the setting were looking to change. Run the f ollowing command and replace [SCHEME_GUID] with what you just copied.

powercfg.exe q [SCHEME_GUID]

Youll get a low of text in the command prompt. Scroll through it and look f or Critical battery level. First you need to copy the long alphanumeric string that belongs to the subgroup Battery, which you can f ind a short ways above Critical battery level. Paste that in your notepad window. Youll next need to copy the GUID f or the setting, which is right next to Critical Battery level. T he f ollowing screenshot highlights the section to look f or in red and the two GUIDs you need to copy in cyan.

Now we have all of the pieces we need to build our command:

powercfg.exe setdcvalueindex [SCHEME_GUID] [SUBGROUP_GUID] [SETTING_GUID] [VALUE]

Fill in the Scheme, Subgroup, and Setting GUIDS f rom your notepad window and replace [VALUE] with your desired percentage. Hit the Enter key to set it. Heres the command I used f or my particular needs:

powercfg.exe -setdcvalueindex 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e e73a048d-bf274f12-9731-8b2076e8891f 9a66d8d7-4ff7-4ef9-b5a2-5a326ca2a469 1

T his will set my critical battery level when on battery power to 1%. If you want to also change the setting f or when youre on AC power as well, just hit the Up key in the command prompt (to bring up your previous command) and change the

-setdcvalueindex

option to:

-setacvalueindex

T hats it! Now you can squeeze every last possible minute out of your battery, whether Windows wants you to or not!