Windows 7 contains dozens of hidden diagnostic utilities. In the past, we have shown you how to quickly access some of those utilities. Today, we will take a look at another hidden gem in Windows 7.

Powercfg.exe is a command line utility which allows users to control power settings. It has been present in Windows for a long time. However, in Windows 7 Powercfg.exe includes some additional features. One of them, is the ability to create neatly formatted Energy efficiency reports.

In order to generate this report, start the command prompt with Administrator privileges. The quickest way to do so, is to type cmd in the Start Menu and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

The command Prompt window should point to the \Windows\System32 directory. In order to build the Energy Efficiency report, you need to simply type the following command and press enter.

powercfg -energy -output C:\Power_Mg_Report.html

Here C:\Power_Mg_Report.html is the location, where the report will be saved. Feel free to use any other location.

Windows will inspect your system’s behaviour for about a minute and then generate the report. The report will indicate all potentially problematic settings and recommend steps to improve your system’s battery backup time.