Can I disable the cancel shutdown on power loss in Power Chute 3?

[Anonymous user]

In my application the UPS is there to allow the PC to shutdown on power loss, that's a shutdown soon after power loss. It all works fine, except for the dialog that pops up allowing the user to click "cancel shutdown".

On power loss I need it to initiate shutdown without cancellation, no exceptions. I could do this in the software supplied with a UPS from a different manufacturer; it was possible in that to edit and modify the events so that no notifications appeared at all, but the PC shutdown and the UPS powered off.

Any ideas? I don't mind registry hacks or the like.

Some system details:

Back-UPS CS 650, PowerChute Personal Edition 3.0.2

PC is Windows XP SP3

Hibernate disabled, I want shutdown and cold boot on power loss.

Any help and suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve.

[BillP]

Steve,

I am looking into this and will get back to you and a few days.

I am curious as to why this is a concern. The pop up last for 10 seconds and assuming the users does the right thing and leaves it alone the OS will power down.

[Anonymous user]

Thanks for the reply;

My problem is that the users tend to jump and press whatever pops up on the screen, and if they hit "cancel" it won't shutdown the PC, and they don't have a way of initiating shutdown manually. I really need a UPS that can initiate a shutdown and power off without the possibility of user cancellation.

The system needs to be fool proof; if there's a possibility the wrong button will be pressed, then I can be certain it will be pressed.

Thanks for looking into it,

Steve.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Steve,

Unfortunately there is no good way to do what you would like. If the pop up is a concern as you stated your best option is to uninstall PCPE and use native shutdown (control panel, power options) or APCUPSD. I tested both on Windows XP SP3 and neither had a shut down pop up window.

If you are switching to native shutdown you may need to update the USB driver. Go to Device Manager- Batteries, double click on APC UPS, click on the Driver tab, select update driver, select No, not this time, click next, select Install from a list or specific location, click next, select Don’t search. I will choose the driver to install, click next, select HID UPS Battery, click next.  APCUPSD installs its own driver.

With power options you can configure shut down for low battery/ battery percentage or a critical battery alarm. With APCUPSD you can configure UPS to power down for those issue and others. Power options display UPS battery percentage where APCUPSD also display battery status and many other statuses. 

[Anonymous user]

Dear Bill,

thanks for the updates; I'll give both methods a go and let you know how I get on. Having had a look at the greater options available in apcupsd I'll try that first.

Many thanks for the speedy response,

Steve.

[Anonymous user]

Dear Bill,

Having now tested apcupsd I can confirm it does exactly what I need. Thanks again for the support.

Yours,

Steve.