How to Check Sleep States and Make a Battery Report with powercfg
Use powercfg /a to list sleep states and powercfg /batteryreport to save a battery HTML report. What the browser simulator covers vs a real Windows PC.
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.
Try the command
Check sleep states or generate a battery report
What powercfg does
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.
Generate a battery report
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.
Common mistake
Assuming every PC reports the same sleep states, or ignoring the file path in the /batteryreport output and searching the wrong folder.
FAQ
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.
Knowledge Check
1 / 2Which switch lists available sleep states?
References
These documentation links provide authoritative details for the commands used in this article.