A performance tuning tool reported that a bunch of our servers are set to the "Balanced" power plan when they should be set to "High Performance". The tool gets the value from HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\ActivePowerScheme per the MSDN article https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa373177%28v=vs.85%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
Values:
Power Saver - a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a
Balanced - 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e
High Performance - 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c
About half of our servers show the registry value for "High Performance", and the others show the value for "Balanced". However if I look at the screen to change the plan, "High Performance" is selected on every server as shown below. Has anyone run into this? Why doesn't the selected value match the registry value? All servers are virtualized on vSphere if it makes a difference.
Best Answer
This is because the power scheme is being managed by Group Policy. Group Policy doesn't modify that registry key, it modifies the Group Policy registry key for that setting.
You need to look here:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings
Note that the majority of Group Policy settings ("true" policy settings) don't modify the registry outside of the Group Policy registry keys.