Software that starts the computer

[unwashed potato!]

looking for software that will start my computer up at a certain time, and if possible also start winamp up playing a song, and even better a speicfic song, like an alarm clock. Is there any free software that does this and doesn't require the cmoputer to be in standy by or hidbernated? and also would be good if the days that it starts the computer would be good as i live somewhere else on weekends and if i forgot there would be hell to pay.

 

[basmic]

Sounds like you could with researching WOL - Wakeup On Lan. But you need something to send the signal in the first place.

 

[unwashed potato!]

thankyou for the suggestion but thats not quite what im searching for, im looking for something that will just startup automatically without anyone needing to do anything, and automaticaly will play music, just like an alarm clock. I love listening to my music when i get up, but only thing i hate about that is that i have to get out of bed, switch on the cmoputer, wait for it to load, then turn on winamp, select the song, then after all that then go backto be but im wide awake by now so no point

 

[MarcLister]

Does your BIOS support the turn on automatically at some time feature? I think mine does. There is a menu which allows you to set the PC to turn on everday at a certain time. You could then set Windows to logon automatically.

Then you could run a Scheduled Task to either run Winamp and get this plugin or you could designate the mp3 file as the 'task'. I just selected an mp3 and the Scheduled Task wizard seemed to accept it. You would then set the task to run either when your PC starts or on logon. Not sure what the difference in timing would be. You'd have to try both and see what happens.

 

[ns400r]

If your computer is OFF then nothing on your hard drive will be able to turn it back on automatically for you.

Best bet would be a look around your bios as mentioned earlier to see if you have the auto start option.