How to Check Sleep States and Make a Battery Report with powercfg

powercfg is the Windows command for power settings: which sleep states the PC claims to support, and a battery health HTML report. Official switches are on Microsoft Learn: powercfg. There is no course lesson for this command yet. The in-browser terminal simulates powercfg /a and powercfg /batteryreport; use the CMD practice hub for more commands you can run in the browser.

With no arguments, real Windows and this simulator print that the parameters are invalid and tell you to try /?. You always pass a switch.

/a lists sleep states the system reports (Standby, Hibernate, Hybrid Sleep, Fast Startup, or Modern Standby on some laptops). The list is hardware- and driver-dependent. Seeing Standby (S3) here does not prove your laptop will sleep in real life.

powercfg /batteryreport writes an HTML file. In this simulator the path is C:\Users\User\battery-report.html. On a real PC the path is printed in the output; open that file in a browser. The report is for laptops and tablets with a battery. A desktop may error or produce a thin report.

Switches such as /energy, /requests, /hibernate, and /change depend on a full Windows installation and are not simulated here. Some power-setting changes require an elevated Command Prompt; check the requirement for the specific switch on Microsoft Learn instead of assuming every powercfg command needs Administrator access.

Assuming every PC reports the same sleep states, or ignoring the file path in the /batteryreport output and searching the wrong folder.

How do I see which sleep states my PC supports? powercfg /a

How do I generate a Windows battery report? powercfg /batteryreport, then open the HTML path it prints.

Where is the battery report saved? Wherever the command prints. In this sandbox that is C:\Users\User\battery-report.html.

Why do I see Modern Standby instead of Sleep? Some laptops use Modern Standby (S0 low power). That is a firmware/OS choice, not a typo in powercfg.

How do I find what is blocking sleep? On a real Windows PC, run powercfg /requests. It is not simulated here.