I have my antivirus scheduled to do a scan of the computer on Wednesdays at 9am while I'm at work. But this means my wife needs to turn the computer on, wait for the scan to complete and shut it off. Is there any way I can program my computer to automatically turn on at those times?

I know I could just as easily do it when I'm home and on it but the issue is I'm on it so infrequently and when I am on it I have limited time to wait for the scan to complete while I do other things. Anyone know of a program or maybe something in the settings that can do this? Preferably for free?

Could http://www.wikihow.com/Automatically-Turn-on-a-Computer-at-a-Specified-Time be of any help?

Yes. I was actually just reading about it pretty much when I hit the submit button on this thread. As soon as my scan is done I'm going to reboot and see if there is a wake up or start on alarm setting in my bios. Thanks.

heh, No hay ningun problema!

Ok, so this is clearly beyond my scope of knowledge. I have the computer programmed to automatically start at 7:30am on the 5th of every month and I've got my virus scanner set to scan everyday at 8am (there was no way to specify a day in each program) so this way the computer will turn on every 5th at 0730 and the virus scanner will run.

Now, how do I tell my computer to shut-down at 10am?

I'm assuming I need to writ ea batch file then point the "Task Scheduler" to that batch file. But, how do I write a batch file. I know I'll have to do it through notepad and I have to save it as ".bat" but what the hell do I actually put in the batch file to get it to do what I want it to do?

simplest way woul dbe with the power management.. just set it to log off and sleep after an hour

Oh Yeah, completely forgot about that. Thanks.

You really are a ninja of everything, Andy.

A better way would be to have your Antivirus software shut down the computer after the full scan completes. Most have this capability buried in the settings somewhere. If you specify your Antivirus I may be able to tell you where. Sleep mode is not ideal, nor using task scheduler, as for sleep mode it stores your system in a low-power state using RAM, so a power outage will knock it out in a bad way. Task Scheduler could cause the task to fire too soon while the scan is still ongoing (also a problem with using sleep/hibernation mode)

OOh, just the person I was hoping to reply. Right now I'm using COMODO and I'm reinstalling my copy of Stopzilla I finally go tthem to send me a new CD key. I'm not sure which one I'm officially use permanently but I switched to COMODO several years ago when I wasn't bale to reinstall Stopzilla despite having a lifetime subscription to it.

Oh wow that's nice! I should try it out...