autoclose 1.3
_______________________________

 2001 Philippe Bornet
E-mail: philippe.bornet@dihsr.unil.ch

Contents
_______________________________

1. Description
2. Legal stuff
3. Installation
4. Usage tips
5. Known problems and limitations
6. Credits


1. Description
_______________________________

autoclose is a small utility to shut down Windows systems automatically. 
Some of its features are:

- Shut down the system at certain hour (e.g. at 12:00).
- Shut down the computer according CPU usage
- Several types of shut down (shut down, restart, ...).
- User friendly interface.
- Works with Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000.

2. Legal stuff
_______________________________

This program is freeware, but only for private use (not commercial). For
commercial use or inclusion in distributions that you gets paid (CD's, ...)
contact with the author for authorization. You can redistribute it for free,
whenever you use the original package. It you don't have a original package,
you can find it at http://www.geocities.com/pbornet/autoclose.zip. If you
are interested by the source code, send me an e-mail.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY. The author declines responsibility for any possible damage due to the
use of this program.



3. Installation
_______________________________

Simply copy the program's files to the directory where you want to store it
and make a shortcut to the executable file.



4. Usage
_______________________________

- Due to the differences among Windows 95, 98 and NT/2000, the program doesn't show
the same options to all OS: 

- Under Win95 / Win98, you'll be able make your system shutdown (and poweroff), log off, 
hibernate or reboot.

- Under WinNT/Win2000, you'll be able make your system shutdown (to safe to switch off screen,
 poweroff, log off, hibernate or reboot.

- The Force close option assure that the system will be shut down, no matter
  what programs would be actived. In the other hand, you may lose any unsaved
  data of these programs, so use this option carefully.

- Autoclose can shut down at any date or time. It can also perform the same task at the same hour
every day.

- Autoclose can shut down on CPU idle : when the CPU usage goes below a certain value while a 
certain amount of time, autoclose runs the task specified in the "What" tab.

- In the options panel, you can specifiy autoclose loading with windows (useful for recurring
tasks).

- You can also specifiy a value for the warning countdown.

- Autoclose can wait for a certain amount of time you can specify in the options tab
and then start shutting down on CPU idle.

- The switch -start (e.g. autoclose.exe -start) will cause autoclose automatically starting then
countdown to the shut down.


5. Known problems and limitations
_______________________________

- The Poweroff option not work with always on Windows NT/2000. This is a
  issue of the version of Windows NT and the APM configuration of Windows 2000,
  and not a fault of this program.
- The hibernate option depends on Power Management abilities of each computer.


6. Credits
_______________________________

 2001 Philippe Bornet

If you have any suggestion, you find a bug, etc., send me an e-mail.

