How will my Power Settings change?

You may notice that as you log in one morning, you see a box flash by that says "Distributing Application: Power Config." This means that your computer is being automatically configured to be in compliance with the Power use portion of the Student Success Conservation Policy. After the box in question disappears (you may not even notice it; it happens very quickly) you will be able to see your power settings have been changed if you open your Control Panel and click on "Power Options." They will have been changed to look like this:

After this change has been applied, you will receive an update called "Install Direct Shutdown," which should look like this:

After this runs, you will notice that you now have a link on your start menu, in the startup folder, to run Direct Shutdown, as pictured below:

The next time you restart your computer, Direct Shutdown will start up and create an icon in your system tray, as shown below:

Direct Shutdown is the purple icon with the circle and line through it. If you double click the Direct Shutdown link, you can see your settings, as shown below:

"Hibernate" is the setting you are concerned with. By default, Hibernate is set to occur when you press Ctrl+WindowsKey+H; We recommend you leave it that way, but if you prefer a different set of hotkeys you may change them at this time. Now that you have Direct Shutdown installed and functional, you will press you hotkey combination (which is by default Ctrl+WindowsKey+H) to lock your computer instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del. This will bring up the following message:

Clicking "yes" or hitting enter will put your computer into Hibernation, a mode wherein your open programs are saved in the state that they are in, but your computer is using as much power as when you turn it completely off. In order to wake your computer from Hibernation mode, you will need to press the power button. This will bring you to a screen just like when you lock your computer. Log back in and your documents will be where you left them.

It is advisable to close any documents open over a networked connection prior to hibernating your PC. In addition, when you return from Hibernation mode, Outlook may notify you that it was unable to complete some actions. This is normal behavior; it simply indicates that Outlook had scheduled to perform a task (check for new email, notify you of a meeting, etc.) that it could not perform because it was in Hibernation mode.

If you have any questions or concerns, or if you would like to add information to this documentation, please call us at 864-4258, or submit a trouble ticket at http://ssts.ku.edu/troubleticket.

Help using the Power portion of the Policy

Q: I left my Outlook open before I Hibernated my computer, and now it is saying this: Is my computer broken?

A: Nope! This is normal behavior. Outlook had simply scheduled to check on your appointments and couldn’t because your computer was hibernating. Clicking OK will clear this message and everything will be back to normal.

Q: When I hibernated my computer, I had an Access database open that looked like this: Now it looks like this: Is anything broken?

A: Probably not, but it is very, very important to close Access databases when you leave your computer, whether you are Hibernating or not. If left open too long, Access databases can become corrupt, so make a practice of closing Access databases when you are not using them. To restore what you saw before your computer hibernated, close and open the database again.

Q: I had a Word Document open when I hibernated my computer. It looked like this at the time: When I came back there was this error message: Now Word looks like this: What is happening and why can’t I save?

A: When you hibernated your computer, you had a document open over the network. Now, you will not lose the changes to this document, but since you were disconnected from the network while your computer was hibernating, you cannot save it back to its original location. To save your changes, simply save a copy of the document on the desktop, and save that copy over the copy on your network drive. You might open the network drive copy first to make sure you want to save over it. In the future, you should consider saving your documents and closing them before hibernating, as you will experience fewer problems like this.

How will my Printer Settings Change?

As a part of the Conservation policy, Student Success Technology Services has developed a way to help conserve paper and toner automatically. Normally, printers are set automatically to print in color if they are color printers, and just on one side, even if they can duplex. In order to save color toner, you would have to go in to the printer’s properties and check a box, like pictured below.

What we have done is compile a list of all the printers that can print in color or duplex, and create profiles that change their settings to the most economical (and ecological!) settings possible. Sometime over the next few days, you will see a black box pop up when you log in. They look like this:

You should have one pop up for every printer that you have installed that can print in color or on two sides. The result? Now your defaults should be set in compliance with the conservation policy.

Basically what is happening is your computer is being scanned for printers of particular names. If we find a printer that is on our list for economical settings, the computer automatically changes the settings for you on login. You can still change the settings back to color or single sided if you wish, but the next time you log in, they will be set back to the economical settings.

In addition, you will notice that your margins in Microsoft Word are probably smaller than you are used to. Again, this is an effort to save paper. When you open Word, you will notice close margins. There are two important things to know about this:

1. It will not change the margins on any pre-existing Word documents... your old files are safe.
2. It is very easy to change the margins back to what they were, if, for example, you need different margins to print on letterhead.

In order to change you margins in Microsoft Word, go to the file menu, and choose Page Setup.

Once you are in the page setup screen, simply change the margins to whatever you wish.

Help using the Printer portion of the Policy

Q: Help! I keep getting this error message!

A: This is, more often than not, a result of human error rather than an actual problem with the computer. Basically what this error message is saying is "I can’t find the printer I was told I would find." More often than not it is because we misspelled the printer’s name in the hundred of lines of code it took to get this system up and running. If you encounter this issue, please contact us, and we will rewrite the command for that printer (and apologize for your inconvenience!)

Q: I have a printer that can print double sided and in color, but when I print to it it only prints single sided / doesn’t print in black and white. What is happening?

A: In our testing we found that if a user had an old installation of the printer, the settings we created may not apply correctly. Uninstalling and reinstalling the printer has done the trick for us. You can either submit a trouble ticket for us to do so, or if you know how to do it yourself, you are welcome to.

Q: I have a printer that can print double sided and is not, or I have a printer that prints in color, but does not default to black and white. Why?

A: We wrote special commands for all the printers our inventory showed as being capable of printing double sided or in color. However, since the inventory can be wrong or incomplete, we may not have caught all the printers. Please submit a trouble ticket about this issue, and we would be happy to add any printers we may have missed.