PowerShell One-Liner to Configure the NIC Power Management Settings

While working on a series of one-liners for configuring the NIC on machines, I created this needed to makes changes to the power management settings of the NIC. This is something that will be implemented in the build, so I also wanted to make the script into a one-liner so the code itself can reside within the task sequence.

This one-liner can check/uncheck the boxes within the Power Management tab of the network adapter. There are two ways this can be done. The first is by WMI and the second is by the registry. The WMI method failed across the different versions of Windows 10, whereas the registry method stays the same. 

The script first finds the correct NIC by querying for the one that is enabled and is also a physical NIC. Next, it locates the correct registry key for that NIC by comparing the driver names. It then checks the PnPCapabilities value. The value associated with this entry determines which boxes are checked/unchecked. It will then check if the registry has the same value as is specified in the script. If not, it will change the registry value, disable, and enable the NIC, and retrieve the registry value. It will then compare that value with the specified $PnPValue to verify the change took place. If it did not, the script will exit with an error code 1, thereby reporting to SCCM/MDT that it failed. 

There are four values that can be used to change the boxes. The value is associated with the $PnPValue variable. The only thing you should have to change with this one-liner is the $PnPValue, which is why I placed that in the front of the one-liner for easy editing. The $PnP values are as follows:

• 0 - Checks both Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power and Allow this device to wake the computer, while leaving Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer unchecked
• 24 - Unchecks all three boxes
• 256 - Checks all three boxes
• 272 - Checks Allow Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power, while unchecking Allow this device to wake the computer and Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer

NOTE: I did learn one interesting thing while writing and testing this. The WMI method will disable and enable the NIC when making the change, whereas, with the registry method, you must disable and enable the NIC separately as is done in the one-liner below.

Here is the one-liner:

 powershell.exe -executionpolicy bypass -command "&{$PnPValue=256;$Adapter=Get-NetAdapter | Where-Object {($_.Status -eq 'Up') -and ($_.PhysicalMediaType -eq '802.3')};$KeyPath='HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}\';foreach ($Entry in (Get-ChildItem $KeyPath -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).Name) {If ((Get-ItemProperty REGISTRY::$Entry).DriverDesc -eq $Adapter.InterfaceDescription) {$Value=(Get-ItemProperty REGISTRY::$Entry).PnPCapabilities;If ($Value -ne $PnPValue) {Set-ItemProperty -Path REGISTRY::$Entry -Name PnPCapabilities -Value $PnPValue -Force;Disable-PnpDevice -InstanceId $Adapter.PnPDeviceID -Confirm:$false;Enable-PnpDevice -InstanceId $Adapter.PnPDeviceID -Confirm:$false;$Value=(Get-ItemProperty REGISTRY::$Entry).PnPCapabilities};If ($Value -eq $PnPValue) {Write-Host 'Allow the computer to turn off this device is configured'} else {Write-Host 'Failed';Exit 1}}}}"