Windows 7 Release Candidate Shutdown Workaroun
Yeah, such a long blog title.
Anyway, for those who are interested to know a work-around for your bi-hourly Windows 7 Release candidate shutdown, here's a simple explanation and a step-by-step guide.
First of all, a million thanks to the wonderful folks at CoolBusters for this wonderful solution.
Microsoft was stupid naive enough to actually link the shutdowns to YOUR system time. Just by changing your PC's date to something before 03/01/2010, your system will no longer shutdown every 2 hours. Unfortunately, some applications and websites will go berserk with an improper date, so the best thing to do is to change the date ONLY WHEN NEEDED and turn it back to the proper date after a while. Manually doing this is terribly inconvenient of course, but fortunately, Windows have batch files and task schedulers to do the job for you.
1. Make sure that you are no longer receiving updates from Microsoft for your operating system.
Go to Control Panel> System and Security > Windows Update. Click on Change Settings. Change the dropdown list under Important Updates to "Never check for upgrades (not recommended)". Contrary to what you just read, this is highly recommended in order for Microsoft not to sneak in a patch to this awesome loophole.
2. Create a batch file that does the time changing bit automatically for you.
Right click on your desktop and create a new text file. Rename the text file to "SetDate.bat" or some such sort. Make sure that the extension of the file is ".bat" and not ".txt". Edit the batch file and copy paste the following:
date/T>date.txt
set /P str=Save the batch file.
The batch file gets the current date and places in into a text file named "date.txt". It parses the date string saved by removing the first few characters (the weekday prefix) and stores it into the variable %str%. Then it changes the date to January 1, 2010, counts 600 seconds (10 minutes), then changes the date back to the current date. There might be a problem if you cross 12AM within those 10 minutes, but that's just a very minor inconvenience if you ask me.
3. Schedule your batch file to run at the appropriate time.
Now that you have the batch file, you can use the task scheduler to make your file run automatically given a trigger of some sort. After March 1, 2010, your Windows 7 Release Candidate will display a pop-up every hour after start up warning you of its expiration in an hour. We can use this pop-up as a signal for your system to run the batch file. Thank you Microsoft! What we will do is to run the batch file 58 minutes after the pop-up was displayed, which is 2 minutes before the shutdown.
Click the Start icon and in the Search textbox, type taskschd.msc. This will open up the Task Scheduler. Click the Action menu and choose Create Task.
In the General tab, enter a name for the task, such as "SetDate". Click the checkbox beside "Run with highest privileges."
In the Triggers tab, click New. Change the value of the dropdown beside "Begin the task" to "On an event". For Log, choose "System". For Source, choose "Application Popup". For Event ID, input 26. Check Delay Task and input 58 minutes. Also check Enabled. Uncheck all other options.
In the Actions tab, choose "Start a program" and then browse for the batch file you created.
In the Conditions tab, uncheck "Stop if the computer switches to battery power".
Click the Okay button and there you go.
4. Restart your PC.
Congrats! No more shutdowns :)
A command screen display WILL show up whenever the batch file is run. Just minimize it and let it run its course.
Anyway, for those who are interested to know a work-around for your bi-hourly Windows 7 Release candidate shutdown, here's a simple explanation and a step-by-step guide.
First of all, a million thanks to the wonderful folks at CoolBusters for this wonderful solution.
Microsoft was stupid naive enough to actually link the shutdowns to YOUR system time. Just by changing your PC's date to something before 03/01/2010, your system will no longer shutdown every 2 hours. Unfortunately, some applications and websites will go berserk with an improper date, so the best thing to do is to change the date ONLY WHEN NEEDED and turn it back to the proper date after a while. Manually doing this is terribly inconvenient of course, but fortunately, Windows have batch files and task schedulers to do the job for you.
1. Make sure that you are no longer receiving updates from Microsoft for your operating system.
Go to Control Panel> System and Security > Windows Update. Click on Change Settings. Change the dropdown list under Important Updates to "Never check for upgrades (not recommended)". Contrary to what you just read, this is highly recommended in order for Microsoft not to sneak in a patch to this awesome loophole.
2. Create a batch file that does the time changing bit automatically for you.
Right click on your desktop and create a new text file. Rename the text file to "SetDate.bat" or some such sort. Make sure that the extension of the file is ".bat" and not ".txt". Edit the batch file and copy paste the following:
date/T>date.txt
set /P str=Save the batch file.
The batch file gets the current date and places in into a text file named "date.txt". It parses the date string saved by removing the first few characters (the weekday prefix) and stores it into the variable %str%. Then it changes the date to January 1, 2010, counts 600 seconds (10 minutes), then changes the date back to the current date. There might be a problem if you cross 12AM within those 10 minutes, but that's just a very minor inconvenience if you ask me.
3. Schedule your batch file to run at the appropriate time.
Now that you have the batch file, you can use the task scheduler to make your file run automatically given a trigger of some sort. After March 1, 2010, your Windows 7 Release Candidate will display a pop-up every hour after start up warning you of its expiration in an hour. We can use this pop-up as a signal for your system to run the batch file. Thank you Microsoft! What we will do is to run the batch file 58 minutes after the pop-up was displayed, which is 2 minutes before the shutdown.
Click the Start icon and in the Search textbox, type taskschd.msc. This will open up the Task Scheduler. Click the Action menu and choose Create Task.
In the General tab, enter a name for the task, such as "SetDate". Click the checkbox beside "Run with highest privileges."
In the Triggers tab, click New. Change the value of the dropdown beside "Begin the task" to "On an event". For Log, choose "System". For Source, choose "Application Popup". For Event ID, input 26. Check Delay Task and input 58 minutes. Also check Enabled. Uncheck all other options.
In the Actions tab, choose "Start a program" and then browse for the batch file you created.
In the Conditions tab, uncheck "Stop if the computer switches to battery power".
Click the Okay button and there you go.
4. Restart your PC.
Congrats! No more shutdowns :)
A command screen display WILL show up whenever the batch file is run. Just minimize it and let it run its course.