Complete guide to automating your Internet Connection and PC

Note: This trick is not specifically for BSNL Broadband, It applies for anyone who uses a broadband connection which requires you toconnect using your username and password.

Wanted to schedule your BSNL Broadband Night Unlimited Connection to dial up automatically to the internet when the “happy hours” start because you wanted to download a huge file/use limewire? Well, here is a simple method. Now you don’t have to wake up every morning at 2:00 AM to connect or again at 8:00 AM to disconnect your connection.

Well, lets begin assuming that you have already finished setting up your connection. This trick is very short and simple.

Open notepad and type:

rasdial [connection name] [username] [password]

without the square brackets.

For example, If I have named my connection Dataone, my username is livewares and my password is livewarespass, I’ll type

rasdial Dataone livewares livewarespass

Got it? Now click on File -> Save As…

Type in "Connect.bat" , with the quotation marks, as the file name, select the location.

Note: You need to select a place where you will keep it permanently, If you move this file later on, then it won’t connect automatically.


For making a batch file which disconnects, open notepad again, copy and paste the following:

rasdial /disconnect

Save this as "Disconnect.bat", with the quotation marks in the same location as before(not necessary).

But we need to schedule the connection. So what we do is open the Scheduled Tasks program(Well, who would have thought scheduled tasks would come into operation anywhere!!)

Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks

Double click Add Scheduled Task to open a wizard. Click Next > Then click Browse, go to the location where you saved the Connect.bat file, click on it and then press open. Now select Daily and click next. Set the start time to 2:05 AM(This is the time when the night unlimited time starts. Since there can be uncertainty about when It becomes 2:00 AM for BSNL, we set a safe 2:05 AM or 2:10 AM) and press Next. Enter your Windows XP account password, if any, or else leave blank.

For those who didn’t enter a password:
Press next, check Open advanced properties for this task when I click on Finish and press finish. In the advanced properties dialog box which pops up, check Run only if logged on option at the bottom of the box. Click apply and then ok.

For those who entered a password, click next, check Open advanced properties for this task when I click on Finish and press finish.

In the advanced properties box that comes up, go to settings and check "wake the computer to run this task".

So when you want to switch off the pc at night, choose "hibernate" instead of shutdown. You can get hibernate from the shutdown menu by pressing the shift key. The standby mode changes to hibernate. You can enable hibernation by right clicking on desktop, choose properties>screensaver>power>hiberante> check enable hibernation.

Now, if you hibernate with the scheduled tasks enabled, you may notice your pc waking up to the login window and pausing there. To disable this, go to start>run.

Type in:
control userpasswords2

Now uncheck "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer".

It's all ready now. Choose a sample time for your scheduled task and hibernate your pc. Watch your pc wakeup and connect to internet easily. You can also schedule other programs like Limewire to run when your pc wakes up. Just choose the appropriate time for the task.

Now, your computer will automatically connect to the internet at 2:05 AM with no hassles.

If you also want to schedule disconnecting, then repeat the above steps selecting Disconnect.bat and setting the start time to 7:55 AM.

Now you can keep your computer running and sleep peacefully. Sweet dreams!

You can also schedule your pc to shutdown at a specific time by making a shortcut as shown here and then choosing that shortcut file as a scheduled task to run at, say, 7:56 a.m.

All done, now your pc wakes up at 2:00 am, downloads all the stuff you need and shuts itself down by 8:00 a.m. Cool, huh?