Programable Auto shutdown PC when a download is complete

[aker]

Please add this option:

Programable, Auto shutdown PC when a download is complete!

useful to save energy.

Myths About Turning Off your Computer: (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/turnoff-computer.html)

When it comes to turning off your computer, myths and legends abound. Some will tell you that turning off your computer (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/commonly-lefton-appliances.html) is bad for the computer, that your computer only has so many ons and offs in it and that by turning it off every time you stop using it, you'll eventually kill your machine. The other great myth about computers is that it takes more energy to turn your computer on than it does to maintain it in sleep mode.


Does Turning on Your Computer Use More Energy than Leaving it On?


No. It's a silly myth. Jaymi Heimbuch debunked this myth in an earlier post (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/power-saving-myths-debunked.html):
..our technology has advanced so much that lights, appliances and gadgets can be turned off any time they aren't needed and turned back on when they are, without any risk of harming them. And doing so means energy savings. (http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/green-computer-power-saving.html)

So go ahead and turn off your computer if it makes sense to.

Does Turning Your Computer Off and On Hurt It?


According to the United States Department of Energy (http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/appliances/index.cfm/mytopic=10070), there are no computers on the market that actually last long enough for the negative effects of turning your computer off and on to affect anything.


From EERE:
Most PCs reach the end of their "useful" life due to advances in technology long before the effects of being switched on and off multiple times have a negative impact on their service life. The less time a PC is on, the longer it will "last." PCs also produce heat, so turning them off reduces building cooling loads.
As you can see, the more time a computer spends turned off, the longer it will last.

[Forsen]

Sure, why not.

[tomardern]

Sounds like a good idea. Steam becoming more environmentally friendly?

[aker]

Yeah, a green application ;D

[Die Finsternis]

This would be awesome for those long downloads (like when I downloaded Empire: TW. It took a whole day).

[felspy]

/totaly signed :D

[Seth.Sekhmet]

+1 on this one

[DaddyCabby]

Yes, this system should be good. I support this one.

[t3hfr3ak]

depends. its more efficient to have your PC running all day then to have it turn on and off all day. it uses more energy to turn on then it does sitting idle. also, constantly turning the pc on and off can also lead to hardware issues. but, if it makes you feel better and you dont use the pc multiple times a day, this would be a good feature. +1 from me

[Sk8SkaNJ]

I'd never use it, but its definitely a useful feature and should be implemented. I imagine they'd have to find a way to differentiate between a game downloading and a game updating, don't know how the Steam backend works for that.

[nahka]

Very needed, I dont want to run my PC on for 5hours, when my download have been complete like 2 hours ago.

[Concussed]

Nice idea doode

[aker]

Bump, is a Good idea not implemented yet!

[hrothunder]

I'm also in support of this, it would be easy to implement.

[alchemistlord]

Yeah, pretty cool feature to have and also environmental friendly. I support this thread.

[cryptodan]

Idea of a Green Steam I like it.

[Dub5279]

+1 I would like to be able to do that.

[spets-invidika]

As if this doesn't already have enough support, bump and +1 vote from me.

Especially nice for people like me with slowish internet -- I often need to leave my computer on overnight or all day when I'd otherwise put it to sleep, then I can't get back to it for several /more/ hours to sleep/hibernate it.

[nojohnny]

+1
Its a step in the right direction.

[aker]

Bump! ;D 10chars

[scotland1]

Bump. This is incredibly useful for people like me with crappy connections.It's good knowing your computer isn't going to run all night.

[leveller]

/thumb up.

[Wurschtie]

Superb. Tick the box, save whales and rainforest trees when gaming.

[seseorang]

Shutdown or switch to standby. I'd favour one of these two - depending on my mood

[Toto pectore]

That would be a valued addition.

[nvuf]

that's a great idea, i mean right now i'm just about to leave borderlands to download for a few hours whilst i sleep, so it would be nice for me to be able to have it auto shutdown afterwards

[DragonFlyM13]

could be handy, i'd prolly never use it though :P

[Ravek]

+1 be green

[Amber.Sweet]

Bump. I'd love to have this for the downloads that only have another hour but will keep the pc running all night. It's not about saving energy. I just hate having my pc run when it has no use.

[tharglet]

Gets a vote from me.
It's not uncommon I let downloads run into the night - it'd be nice to have the downloader shut it down when it's done, as with my connection it isn't usually that far into the night, but too far for me to stay up and watch it :P

[wexer9]

Great idea!

Do it, Valve. :)

[flashn00b]

I apologize for bumping this thread, but this feature would be useful.

[UltimateTobi]

Yes, that's a really cool idea for the people who don't have a very fast Internet connection. It's uninteresting for me, because I download almost everygame in max. 1 - 2 hours, but ye, very helpful feature at all.

[aker]

/Bump ;D Please Valve ;D Go Green!

[99Reaper99]

+1 from me. Easier than setting a shut down time through the OS Setup or automatic standby time by guessing when the download will be done lol

[Left4Dead2<3]

/Signed :D

[aker]

Bump! ;D 10chars

Gogogo STEAM go Green!

[Atherius]

Do it !

[Snowey111]

Resurrecting the zombie-threads are we?

I do support this though.
Have a feeling there might be a third party app for this.

[DevilGeneral]

great idea /signed

[Snowey111]

Oh, i found this:
http://www.users.on.net/~marttinen/
Apparently it can do what this thread is on about, haven't tested it though.

Good luck

[Executable]

Oh, i found this:
http://www.users.on.net/~marttinen/
Apparently it can do what this thread is on about, haven't tested it though.

Good luck

Still better to do it on Steam, because you dont have to install/turn any application and trash your Windows Registers.. I agree with the idea!

[lkevil]

This would be a very useful feature as do all my downloads overnight as I need to use the internet on my laptop during the day.

[Magma]

In conjunction with this would be the option to schedule downloads. This way you wouldn't even have to be present to start the download.

Although you can already set your comptuer to sleep or hibernate after x minutes of inactivity.

[Terrum]

Count me in! :) If Steam implement this feature my electricity bills won't be so high! As all my downloads are only going at 200kb/s and take 10 hours to download a 20gb game (Like Dirt 2 or Alien vs Predator etc). Please make this a new feature VALVe!

[LiveMaI]

This would be a nice feature. What I do to solve this right now is estimate when the download will be done (using google calculator, since Steam is terrible at estimating) add about 30 minutes, and then tell windows to shutdown at that time using the command prompt. Here's how to do it in the command prompt:

Shut down the computer in one hour (3600 seconds):

shutdown /s /t 3600


This can be modified to hibernate the computer by changing /s to /h and the shutdown can be aborted by calling:

shutdown /a

You can probably make a more sophisticated version using netstat, and even more sophisticated if you have bash available on your system (Cygwin for windows, on OSX/linux by default.) An integrated solution would still be preferable.

[iGaming | Chaos]

+1 to this idea.

[Heinosity]

depends. its more efficient to have your PC running all day then to have it turn on and off all day. it uses more energy to turn on then it does sitting idle. also, constantly turning the pc on and off can also lead to hardware issues. but, if it makes you feel better and you dont use the pc multiple times a day, this would be a good feature. +1 from me

What an incredibly huge crock of ♥♥♥♥. :rolleyes:

[ErikaFoyouji]

What an incredibly huge crock of ♥♥♥♥. :rolleyes:

Actually, he/she is sort of correct. It however depends on the power supply, motherboard/cpu, fans, tempurature of the room & other factors.

One of my PC's for example: from the time it takes to boot up to about a minute after when all programs finish loading is EQUAL power usage to about 3 hours of iddle running where it sits in the windows desktop view.

Newer PC's are probably more efficent bootup now, but older PC's like Pentium 2's to Dual Cores take a lot more power to boot up and start everything. I wouldn't be suprised if a Pentium 4 equally uses the same power in bootup as around 6-7 hours of idle time.

However, not sure why we care about PC power. 5 PC's and 5 22" LCD monitors and a laptop plugged in and on 24/7 uses the same power as 1 Mini bar fridge. And 2 mini bar fridges uses the same power as an average newer air conditioner. All depending on the energy efficent ones. It's not PC power useage we need to worry about, but still every bit does help.

/sign

[AncientDonut]

I support this idea since my power supply isn't that good after my hardcore interneting.

[Terrum]

Do VALVe look at how many people "/sign" this suggestion? If so I need to try get everyone to sign it :D

[leveller]

Do VALVe look at how many people "/sign" this suggestion? If so I need to try get everyone to sign it :D

/signed probably doesn't work as well as people would like to think. A Steam decision maker would be more swayed and convinced by 1 great reason why a feature is needed, rather than 1 badly written argument and 20 people adding /signed.

But this thread IS good and the argument IS obviously needed in this day and age. So adding /signed to this is GOOD! ;)

[Terrum]

Well saying exactly "/sign" was just kind of a figure of speech :P I meant do Steam actually count how many people support the idea and then put it into consideration? But yeah I really wanna support this idea in any case :D

[leveller]

I doubt they do count the /signs ... but it can't do any harm to add them :)

[Solona]

Yeah this is a good idea.

[Executioner1337]

/signed

[Terrum]

I doubt they do count the /signs ... but it can't do any harm to add them :)
'Course not :D But I want this to be a high priority suggestion so VALVe actually see it. And it probably wouldn't take seconds for them to implement it

[GamerGurl01]

I think this is a great (http://www.postrandomonium.com) idea, but it'll probably not be implemented because people don't tend to think like that anymore. Sure, it still takes forever to download a big game. But with the "big fast internet" we live in, I'm guessing developers won't come out (http://www.chacha.com/topic/dvd) with this. I want it as well. My power supply isn't the best.

[Kneesocks]

Bump to this idea, I keep my computer downloading games at night so keeping it on once it's downloaded is a waste of energy

[Games5522]

I agree with this idea. There should be a general overhaul of the download manager in steam that allows for the PC to be turned off when a certain download is finished as well as some scheduling options so that you don't have to get up early in the morning to start downloading just because your ISP doesn't count downloads at that time.

The more posts this thread has by DIFFERENT users, the better.

/sign

[pl1149]

depends. its more efficient to have your PC running all day then to have it turn on and off all day. it uses more energy to turn on then it does sitting idle. also, constantly turning the pc on and off can also lead to hardware issues. but, if it makes you feel better and you dont use the pc multiple times a day, this would be a good feature. +1 from me

There was a Mythbusters episode about this, but with a lightbulb. You should look into it (I won't spoil it)

This is a great idea. +1

[Terrum]

There was a Mythbusters episode about this, but with a lightbulb. You should look into it (I won't spoil it)

This is a great idea. +1
Ah, yeah. Haha, I've seen that.

[Radnartjie]

i support this idea :D

[Terrum]

Great! :D We need more supporters still.

[real4xor]

meh, I don`t need this option. I keep this machine running 24/7.

But I`m always in for extra options and functionality. Especially for the downloads. And some people would want to do big downloads at nite and then have their computers turned off automatically...

So why the heck not eh?
______
| sign |
-------

[aker]

Bump, Edited the OP adding some myths about turning On/OFF the PC.

Valve Please Go Green!

[Terrum]

Lol :D Thanks all again.

[MartimParente]

+1


i agree

[lridium]

This would be a nice feature. What I do to solve this right now is estimate when the download will be done (using google calculator, since Steam is terrible at estimating) add about 30 minutes, and then tell windows to shutdown at that time using the command prompt. Here's how to do it in the command prompt:

Shut down the computer in one hour (3600 seconds):

shutdown /s /t 3600


This can be modified to hibernate the computer by changing /s to /h and the shutdown can be aborted by calling:

shutdown /a

You can probably make a more sophisticated version using netstat, and even more sophisticated if you have bash available on your system (Cygwin for windows, on OSX/linux by default.) An integrated solution would still be preferable.

All true, but this doesn't cover you if your connection decides to take a dump and turn a 20 minute download into 5 hours. The above is what I've typically done but I'd love an integrated, Steam-based feature.

+1 Do want.

[Terrum]

:D Getting better

[evoleo24]

The amount of energy you save would be very insignificant. Unless the computer is off for 24-48 hours at a time. The only reason to shutdown computers automatically overnight is in a business environment.

[aker]

#71 Multiply by hundreds or thousands and its worth. Why not?

Also you're reducing CO2 emissions.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cyber-warming-pcs-produce-same-cosub2-subemissions-as-airlines-452531.html

[Terrum]

I know I sound like a real boob here, but I feel great about helping the environment already :P

[arisaka]

/signed

[Terrum]

Nice :)

[Mr.Big]

not a feature I would use often. but it's already in a ton of dl managers so why not? it would be good if I was going out somewhere.

[Terrum]

:D Indeed

[Teddychen]

GREEN STEAM :D Good idea :)

[dante4555]

Hm reminds me of the PS3 feature when a download is complete and installed that the console turns off itself

[Terrum]

;) It's great so many people want it

[manicminer]

Just maybe have it throw up a confirmation dialog before it actually does the shutdown :p
lol

[Terrum]

Just maybe have it throw up a confirmation dialog before it actually does the shutdown :p
lol
Yeah incase you have the shutdown selected and you're still using the PC :P

[Pheonix Wright]

why is this not implemented yet????

[Terrum]

I can't really see VALVe looking through these posts 24/7 ;)

[Yiuca]

I can't really see VALVe looking through these posts 24/7 ;)

I read: "I hope Valve see this post & give me a job looking through posts for them 24/7" :p

I'd really like this kind of feature in it, I thought it'd be one of the more obvious features to include, but then it's probably not the most pressing neither. It'd still be nice, same as having a shutdown when download complete option that I think is missing... When I had to redownload my games the other week I would have quite liked that type of feature.

[Terrum]

Very nicely put! I agree :D

[Terrum]

I think this deserves a bump ;) It hasn't had a reply in for 12 days.

[Xcone]

Would be a nice addition. +1

[nemesisfullhd]

Awesome Idea
/Signed

[aronlist]

just need it

[emiih]

+1 :D

[elevul]

Any news on this?
Every downloading program has this. Steam seems to be the only one who doesn't have it.

[Terrum]

Any news on this?
Every downloading program has this. Steam seems to be the only one who doesn't have it.
Gotta agree there lol. Every program I use that downloads stuff pretty much has it too. Firefox, uTorrent, FileZilla, etc.

[skinny70]

seems like it was a popular idea.
If steam isn't convinced many ppl want it, why not cast a vote?
And it would be easy to program, and ppl who dont want it can just ignore it.
PLEASE add shutdown after dload complete

[em_126]

C'mon Valve! Just do it ;D.

[Ethan Hunt]

/Signed

[CriBENUA]

/signed

[ELASNO]

Meanwhile you can use this if you want to.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UJHMJ4CT
It's a small program I wrote a time ago to shut down the computer when the time equals the time you set.
Hope you like it.

[Friendliest]

/signed

[Slingsh0t]

hey Guys - I've put together a script which automatically shuts down your computer when steam finishes its downloads. It is a windows powershell script that monitors the /steamapps/ directory for download activity.

If you have windows7 you're all good. If you have windowsXP you'll need to download powershell from Microsofts website.

I made a post on my (work in process) battlefield site: http://bfuniverse.com/archives/111

[Slingsh0t]

In addition to my last post - I've also put a youtube video together showing how the script works:

http://bfuniverse.com/archives/111

[leveller]

In addition to my last post - I've also put a youtube video together showing how the script works:

http://bfuniverse.com/archives/111

I'll check out your script shortly, but I'm wondering if you are able to make one script that we can run, that will start Steam at midnight (the start of my off-peak) and then like current script, check for activity and turn off if none. Is that possible?

I think a lot of us would love you for that.

[Menaus]

Sounds like a good idea. Steam becoming more environmentally friendly?

I'm less for the whole "save the enviroment" part of it and more of the "save my wallet" part of it.

[Slingsh0t]

I'll check out your script shortly, but I'm wondering if you are able to make one script that we can run, that will start Steam at midnight (the start of my off-peak) and then like current script, check for activity and turn off if none. Is that possible?

I think a lot of us would love you for that.

Hey Leveller,

You would definitely be able to automate something like that with powershell (launch steam at a particular time and then get the same script to watch the download rates) but you could also use the script I put together as it is at the moment to do what you need.

Simply, create a scheduled task in windows to run steam.exe at a particular time, then schedule a second task to launch the script 10 minutes later. This should get the same result?

[scotland372]

Such a simple yet excellent idea and not even a response from Valve.

My previous comments that they ignore this forum are true!

[em_126]

Bump!

[flashn00b]

Perhaps this idea may require Valve to code Steam again from scratch

[Bernie59]

+1
An auto shutdown function would be a great feature for me because i have a low bandwidth and i have to download my steam games during sometimes 20 hours.

[Slingsh0t]

Quick bump/reminder of this powershell script to shutdown your PC when steam has finished downloads:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypv20qtVi8c

[GreatOne7]

Sounds great. I agree.

[IWearGlasses]

I like this idea!

[aker]

OK Valve, we still need this.

[e633]

/signed

[god_man95]

/signed

[Leox001]

it would be useful

[Internal_energy]

Why not.
Actually steam needs many many features to add.
hoopefully they will respond to any reasonable suggestion fast

[mspacapan]

This would come very handy with big games :D

[jdungeon]

please

[JP-U]

I love this idea. It could go with Steam Green-Light

[Acepwner99]

I agree with this.

[POTaTOS_2.0]

The script is giving false indications that the download has finished. It is unusable due to this defect. The option of the powershell script does not work. WE NEED THIS FUNCTIONALITY NOW!