Schedule PC Shutdown with Windows 7 Media Center Sleep Timer Add-in
If you’re a Media Center user who tends to fall asleep while watching Media Center, you’ll want to give the MC7 Sleep Timer a try. This plug-in comes courtesy of user Sixbit from the forums over at the Green Button website. The MC7 plug-in can be configured to shut down your PC, or just Media Center at a specific time or manually configured interval. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.
Download and install the MC7 Sleep Timer. You can find the link at the end of the article as well.
Once installed, you’ll find it located in the Extras section of Media Center.
Click on the Sleep Timer tile to open it.
How it Works
MC& Sleep Timer minimizes Media Center and opens up in full screen (by default). Once you configure your shutdown time, or hit cancel, you are returned to Media Center.
You’ll see that you have the built-in option to shutdown in 30 minutes or 60 minutes. Custom Timer allows you to set a custom countdown time interval in 5 minute increments and Shutdown Time, as you would expect, lets you set a specific time to shutdown the PC.
To set a Custom shutdown interval, click left or right directional buttons on your remote or the right and left arrow keys on your keyboard.
You can set the Shutdown at Time option the same way…
There are a good amount of customizable options that can be set in a configuration file found by default at C:\Program Files\MC7 Sleep Timer. To do so, open the MC7_Sleep_Timer_Settings.cfg file with Notepad.
Below you’ll see the configurable options. I’ve added notes in red to the right of some of the more important options. For example, the Shutdown_Method option. The default, “Shutdown,” will shutdown the entire computer. If you only want to turn off Media Center, change the setting so it reads: Shutdown_Method=Close MCE.
You can find the explanations of all the configurable options in the MC7 Sleep Timer Readme.txt file found at C:\Program Files\MC7 Sleep Timer. Don’t forget to save the file to save your changes.
I’m a big fan of this plug-in. Sure, it’s not a fancy bells-and-whistles type add-in, but it’s nice and simple and adds a functionality that I really dig. Sadly, for those that use extenders, they are not supported.
Download the plug-in and read the support forum thread at the Green Button.
Category: Digital Media, Media PCs, Windows Media Center
