detailed question about auto start/shutdown

[Tom]

Is there any way I can have my computer turn itself on at a certain time, say 1pm, start outlook, check the mail, redirect it, and then shut back down 15 minutes later? And possibly do this more than once per day?

Running win xp, and outlook 2003.

 

[fatbusinessman]

Um, probably.

Most new motherboards have a setting in the BIOS to turn themselves on at a specific time each day.

A line in the win.ini file should take care of starting up Outlook.

A setting in Outlook to check your mail every 5 minutes should mean that it checks it at least once.

And I think you should be able to schedule a task to shut your computer down at a specific time.

 

[Whipped]

If your motherboard doesn't support the startup time facility, check if it supports Wake up on Ring or something. Bung a modem in there and then phone your PC to wake it up.

I discovered this by accident many years ago when I kept getting home from Uni and finding my PC on. I seriously thought my room was haunted, until the phone went at 2am once and my computer turned itself on.

I are teh dumb!!

 

[Shovel]

Um, probably.

Most new motherboards have a setting in the BIOS to turn themselves on at a specific time each day.

A line in the win.ini file should take care of starting up Outlook.

A setting in Outlook to check your mail every 5 minutes should mean that it checks it at least once.

And I think you should be able to schedule a task to shut your computer down at a specific time.

Sounds pretty reasonable - though you are faced with needing to log in automatically, which may or may not be a security concern for you.

You can set an auto login from Tweak UI. For security you might want to limit the apps it can run, but that will mean making a new account just for this, and having the inconvenience of logging out of the Outlook account before you can use your normal, main account when you are at home.

The only other thing is that rather than mess about with win.ini, you could just a shortcut to Outlook in your Start Menu\Programs\Startup\ Folder.