Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report

How to Run a Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report in Windows 7 and Windows 8​

   Information

The Power Efficiency Diagnostics will analyze your system for common energy efficiency and battery life problems, and report any errors, warnings, and informational details found.

This tutorial will show you how to run a power efficiency diagnostics report of your computer in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

   Warning

You should run this report when your computer is idle and with no open programs or documents for the best results.

Here's How:

1. Open an elevated command prompt in Windows 7 or Windows 8.

2. In the elevated command prompt, copy and paste the command below, and press Enter. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: This will take 60 seconds to run by default. When done it will give you a quick report of any poroblems found and place a detailed Energy_Report.html file on your desktop.
powercfg -energy -output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\Energy_Report.html

   Note

You could also change the command to be able to use your own location for where you want the Energy_Report.html file to be placed (outputted) at.

powercfg -energy -output "C:\Full Path\Energy_Report.html"

3. Double click on the Energy_Report.html file on your desktop to open and see the power efficiency diagnostics report in Internet Explorer. (See screenshot below)

4. This is a copy of my power efficiency diagnostics report in Internet Explorer as an example of what you can see. (See screenshots below)

   Tip

For more information about how to read Powercfg energy reports, you can read the paper "Using PowerCfg to Evaluate System Energy Efficiency" available from the following Microsoft website below as a .docx file.

Using PowerCfg to Evaluate System Energy Efficiency

That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Select a Power Plan in Windows 7
• How to Create or Delete a Custom Power Plan in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Change the Power Plan Settings in Windows 7
• How to Change Power Plan Settings in Windows 8
• How to Restore the Default Power Plan Settings in Windows 7
• How to Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Create a Shortcut to Change Power Plans in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Create a "Power Options" Shortcut in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Create a Power Troubleshoot Shortcut in Windows 7
• How to See Available Sleep States on Your System in Windows 7
• How to See Available Sleep States on Your Windows 8 PC
• How to Generate a Battery Usage Report in Windows 8 and 8.1
• How to View and Override Power Availability Requests in Windows
• How to Generate a Sleep Study Diagnostic Report in Windows 8.1
• How to Generate and View a System Health Report in Windows 8.1
• How to Generate and View a System Performance Report in Windows

 

[Dinesh]

helped me to check my laptop battery life.
Nice one Shawn.

 

[Brink]

Hello Dinesh.

Yeah, the -energy extension is a nice addition to the powercfg command in Windows 7. Very nice.

 

[hariharan]

Is this option Available for Windows Vista?

 

[Brink]

Hello Hariharan,

Sorry, but it's not available in Vista. It's a new feature in Windows 7.

 

[RJL24]

OK now I have the report, but what do I do with it in order to correct the seeming USB issues? Please be very specific, as I require detailed instructions. Thanks in advance.

 

[Brink]

Hello RJl24,

If you are referring to your issue that you posted at your thread below, then this report has nothing to do with that.

http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/124192-something-went-amiss.html

 

[RJL24]

Actually, that issue of something went amiss

http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/124192-something-went-amiss.html

has been resolved, please see the thread.


This posting and report is something I did when analyzing the amiss problem, and discovered a new diagnostic tool.

I redid the analysis today.

In effect the posting I made above regarding the report is relevant to the report and has nothing to do with the previous posting about the haywire behavior of my computer which seems strongly to be linked to a defective USB hub.

But thanks for noting my previous post anyway.

 

[Brink]

This report basically just lets you know what the USB device's power plan options are set as. I did not notice any issues in your report that were just normal for these devices though.

 

[RJL24]

Thanks for your analysis. if it ain't broke: don't fix it.

Cheers,
RJL

 

[Brink]

Exactly.

 

[DustSailor]

Hey Brink, thanks for this. Worked for me the first time (previous install) but can't seem to get it to run again. I tried it with entering my user name and computer name and got it to run with the username only, but it didn't create a html file on the desktop. Think you'd know why?

 

[Brink]

Hello DustSailor,

Did you move your user profile folder from the default location?

You could also change the command to be able to use your own location for where you want the Energy_Report.html file to be placed (output) at.

powercfg -energy -output "C:\Full Path\Energy_Report.html"

 

[DustSailor]

Ah thanks for the help, I managed it with this:

p.s. I think its funny that I only managed to cover up my user name 1 time in the second picture of my above post oh well

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome.

Eh, knowing a user name alone shouldn't cause any issues.

 

[Layback Bear]

I just used this but I had Firefox open on this website.
Very neat little trick. Thank you.

View attachment Energy_Report.zip

 

[Scoop]

Shawn,

I've run the Powercfg -energy report in the past on my Desktop PC without issue but I can't get it to run now. I tried to run it on my Laptop and I'm getting the same error.

Here's my background info:

Desktop PC: Custom-built Windows 7x64 Home Premium (OEM version) with an Asus MoBo. The Desktop PC is my everyday PC, used several times daily. It's been running good, no other Win issues that I can detect, no error screens/dialog's seen, boot time the same as the original OS install in 2011 .

I've run the -energy report last year without the present issue and saved it to an HTML file but that's the last time I've tried running the report since last April.


Laptop PC: Toshiba Windows 7x64 Home Premium, OEM install, standard Toshiba install extra's (recovery partitions, etc). It's mainly a backup PC to my Desktop so I don't use it often, just a daily sign-in to verify basic functions are all ok ('net access, Outlook working, etc).

The other Powercfg queries/commands work ok on both PC's (-requests, -getpowerscheme, -availablesleepstates, -lastwake, -hibernation off/on, etc).



I'm getting the following error when I try to run the -energy report on both PC's.

Could not open the NT Kernel Logger. The NT Kernel Logger is already in use. Ensure that all other performance monitoring utilities, including Reliability and Performance Monitor are not currently in use.


I googl'ed this topic and didn't find a lot of suggestions other than to disable/turn off "Power Performance Monitor" (perfmon.exe) and/or other Reliability utilities that are running. I don't see those processes running when I look at Task Manager or (Sysinternals) Process Explorer.

The searches did also suggest to disable/turn off Procmon (Sysinternals tool) but I'm not running that one on either PC.

I do run the default Windows Task Manager minimized in my Tray so I exited Task Manager to eliminate that as a possible source of the error but that didn't fix the -energy error.

 

[Brink]

Hello Scoop,

If you haven't already, restart the computer, then see if you may be able to successfully run the report.

 

[Scoop]

That did it. I don't know why I can't get the "try the 'universal panacea restart' first" action loaded in my brain's RAM after all these years

 

[Brink]

LOL, no problem mate. I'm just glad it worked for you.