I've spent way too much time on this and it seems basic so I'm hoping someone here has some insight for me. The task seems simple; we need to create designated power plans that users can select between but can't alter.

In detail, we want 3 plans; High Performance, Balanced and Tablet. We want users to be able to choose whichever closest meets their needs at that moment. However we do NOT want them to be able to change the tablet plan to never sleep, for example.

We can force this with a GP Preference that resets everything every single time, but users are complaining about that because they go in and manually are changing the settings (because the interface lets them) and then our policy updates and overwrites it. The high volume of complaints has management requiring that I disable the forms to prevent the confusion.

Is there not a way to disable the individual settings but to still enable the ability to switch between the plans?

P.S. Our environment is Windows 7/8.1/10 and the behavior seems to persist in each OS.

Hi RSchauer77,

There is a gpo could be used to configure the power plan. It is forced and the user is not allowed to configure it.
Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System, then click/tap on Power Management
Here is a link for reference:
Windows 7: Power Plan - Specify a Default for All Users
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/197908-power-plan-specify-default-all-users.html

For your situation, we may need to create three OU then add the machines to these OU. Deploy different gpo for different OU.
NOTE: This response contains a reference to a third party World Wide Web site. Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. Microsoft does not control these sites and has not tested any software or information found on these sites.

Best r

That would enforce a single plan for each computer and would not let users switch between them, correct? That doesn't meet these requirements:

"In detail, we want 3 plans; High Performance, Balanced and Tablet. We want users to be able to choose whichever closest meets their needs at that moment. However we do NOT want them to be able to change the tablet plan to never sleep, for example. "

Hi RSchauer77,

Using GPP, the users could choose the plan and they also could change the configurations.
Using GPO, the users is not allowed to choose the plan or change the configurations.

Deploying different GPO for different users is the only method I could figure out. This method is based on one user only uses specific plan.

Best regards

Yeah, it sounds like it's just not possible, which shocks me. With tablets and ultra portable laptops, it doesn't make sense to have one power plan to rule them all. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to allow users to set the settings to whatever they want if we are trying to implement power saving policies.

At this point the policy is fairly useless.

• Marked as answer by RSchauer77 16 hours 18 minutes ago

Yeah, it sounds like it's just not possible, which shocks me. With tablets and ultra portable laptops, it doesn't make sense to have one power plan to rule them all. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to allow users to set the settings to whatever they want if we are trying to implement power saving policies.

At this point the policy is fairly useless.

• Marked as answer by RSchauer77 Friday, September 04, 2015 3:09 PM

Yeah, it sounds like it's just not possible, which shocks me. With tablets and ultra portable laptops, it doesn't make sense to have one power plan to rule them all. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to allow users to set the settings to whatever they want if we are trying to implement power saving policies.

At this point the policy is fairly useless.

• Marked as answer by RSchauer77 Friday, September 04, 2015 3:09 PM

Yeah, it sounds like it's just not possible, which shocks me. With tablets and ultra portable laptops, it doesn't make sense to have one power plan to rule them all. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to allow users to set the settings to whatever they want if we are trying to implement power saving policies.

At this point the policy is fairly useless.

• Marked as answer by RSchauer77 Friday, September 04, 2015 3:09 PM

Yeah, it sounds like it's just not possible, which shocks me. With tablets and ultra portable laptops, it doesn't make sense to have one power plan to rule them all. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to allow users to set the settings to whatever they want if we are trying to implement power saving policies.

At this point the policy is fairly useless.

• Marked as answer by RSchauer77 Friday, September 04, 2015 3:09 PM