How to Restore Missing Power Plan Options on Windows?

On Windows 10, Power Options allows you to customize your Power Usage – as per requirements. Technically, a power plan is a set of hardware and system settings that defines how power is used and preserved by your computer. There are three built-in power plans: Balanced, Power Saver and High Performance. They can be customised for your system, or you can create new plans based on them.

What Causes Power Options to go Missing?

Many users have reported variations of missing power plans, such as only balance power plan is available and the high performance power plan is missing. This could be due to a system corruption or a Windows Update recently installed which may have modified the registry or tweaked the power options.

We have gathered some working solutions so make sure you try them out. Good luck!

Solution 1: Restore Them Manually

If a Windows Update or something else you did has removed the power plans from your computer, you can get to them by running commands which will recreate them and have them available on your computer the same way as they were before. There are two ways you can do this and it depends on what you prefer.

Command Prompt:

You can restore the missing power plan settings simply by running several commands in Command Prompt.

1. Search for “Command Prompt” either right in the Start menu or by tapping the search button right next to it. Right-click on the first result which will appear at the top and select the “Run as administrator” option.

2. Type in the following set of commands one after another and make sure you click Enter after typing each one and wait for the process to finish and display a “process successful” message:

Note: The last command can only work on Windows 10 versions after the 17101 build as it’s related to restoring the Ultimate Performance Power Plan available for the newest Windows 10 builds for workstations.

powercfg -duplicatescheme a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a
powercfg -duplicatescheme 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e
powercfg -duplicatescheme 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c
powercfg -duplicatescheme e9a42b02-d5df-448d-aa00-03f14749eb61

3. Restart your computer and check to see if the power plans are back where they belong.

Download the Files Yourself:

You can download the required files easily from a guide made by TenForums and it contains the “.pow” files which are used to represent a power plan.

1. Click on this link in order to download the “.zip” file containing the power plans. Locate the file in your Downloads folder, right-click on it, and choose the Extract to option. Extract the files to any location but it’s best to keep it simple because of the following steps.

2. Search for “Command Prompt” either right in the Start menu or by tapping the search button right next to it. Right-click on the first result which will appear at the top and select the “Run as administrator” option.
3. Use the following command in order to install the required power plan:

powercfg -import " C:\Users\2570p\Downloads\Default_Power_Plans\Power saver.pow" (or another path depending upon the install location)

4. In this scenario, instead of “Full path of .pow file”, you will have to paste the correct path to the file, in the folder you have extracted the files to. Let’s say you want to install the “Power saver” plan which is also named that way in the folder.
5. Navigate to the folder where the files are located, click the address navigation bar at the top and copy the address after it has been selected. Head back to Command Prompt and paste the address. If the files were, let’s say, in the Downloads folder within their own folder called Default_Power_Plans, the command should look like:

powercfg -import " C:\Users\2570p\Downloads\Default_Power_Plans\Power saver.pow"

6. Make sure you repeat the same process for all power plans you want to install and check to see if they have returned in Control Panel.

Solution 2: Use the Following Registry Hack

If a Windows Update has indeed hidden these options, it’s possible that Windows it trying to replace this feature or push it into the history by replacing it with other features. If you still wich to use this exact option, you can turn it on using the following registry hack.

Since you will have to edit a registry key, we recommend you check out this article we have made for you to safely backup your registry to prevent unwanted side effects which shouldn’t occur if you just follow the steps carefully.

1. Open the Registry Editor window by typing “regedit” in either the search bar, the Start menu, or the Run dialog box which can be accessed with the Windows Key + R key combination. Navigate to the following key in your registry by navigating at the left pane:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power

2. Click on this key and try to locate an entry called CsEnabled at the right side of the window. If such option exists, right-click on it, and choose the Modify option from the context menu.

3. In the Edit window, under the Value data section change the value from 1 to 0, and apply the changes you have made. Confirm any security dialogs which may appear during this process.
4. You can now manually restart your computer by clicking Start menu >> Power button >> Restart and check to see if the problem is gone.

Note: If this didn’t work out for you, you can try adding an option to show these power plans individually for every power plan your computer knows about.

1. Navigate to the following key in your registry by navigating at the left pane:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings

2. You will be able to see plenty of weirdly named keys inside the PowerSettings key. Navigate to each one of these keys, right-click the right blank side of the, screen, and choose New >> DWORD (32bit) Value.
3. Name each one of these values “Attributes” by right-clicking and choosing the Rename option. After that, right-click the newly created attributed value and choose the Modify option.

4. Set the value to 2 under value data, keep the base in hexadecimal and click OK. Repeat the same process for each key in PowerSettings.
5. Check to see if the problem is gone now.

Solution 3: A Useful Workaround

This workaround can be used quite easily if you want to add the power option which is missing quite easily. Since a new build of Windows usually only leaves the Balanced power plan intact, you can add it (or any other default plan) easily by creating a new plan which is exactly the same as this one.

1. Right-click on the battery icon located in the system tray or the lower right part of your screen, next to time and date, and click on Power Options.
2. If you have removed this from the system tray, click on the Start menu and search for Control Panel. Change the View by option to Large icons and click on the Power Options button.

3. At the left side of the window you should see several options displayed one under the other so click the Create a power plan option. You should see the Create a power plan window and a list of choices. Set the radio button to the power plan you wish to bring back.
4. Under the Plan name, you can even name it the same way as it was originally named before clicking the Next button at the lower right part of the window.

5. You will some additional settings, such as Turn off the display, Put the computer to sleep and Adjust plan brightness. You can set them up now or later, before clicking Create.
6. You will now have access to this power plan so make sure you select it when necessary.

Solution 4: Check for the New Battery Slider

From the latest build of Windows, it appears that the power options have now started to change for users who didn’t perform the steps above and everyone will get to see the new slider you can use to either set everything to high performance or to save battery life.

Also, these settings will now be managed through the Settings tool and not via Control Panel.