Auto COmputer on/off

Is there a setting in Vista that will allow a computer to automatically come on at a specific time and go off also?

i'm not sure but would very much doubt you can tell it to come on at a given time.
if it's not running,what would tell it to switch on?

you should be able to shut it down with some software,i had some somewhere but can't for the life of me find it now.

have a look here,there's a few free ones there for shutting down pc's.

Check the TaskScheduler program... i use it to do a countdown shutdown "after 2hours etc" ... I agree with Harry that your difficulty will be in 'waking' the computer from shutdown.

Few of options:
1. Dont shutdown computer 24/7
2. Dont shutdown computer, edit BIOS to "TURN ON" after power failure. Then install an Electrical Power Plug Timer device. When the power is enabled, the PC will recognise that it was accidently shutdown and reboot ;)
3. Use TaskScheduler for a 'Sleep' and 'WakeUp' event. This puts the PC to hibernate or S3 state (using less power, but not as less as shutdown)... the advantage being that the PC can wake up to the same 'state' as before i.e. with programs running etc.

3. should work fine, as I use it for my Vista Media Center to schedule TV Recording. I.e. Stay Off until time to record, then sleep when complete... ;)

to wake up the computer it can be waken up from another PC on the LAN using a "wake-up" tool, and schedule it to run. Most computers now a day support the wake on lan feature, and there are lots of software for this. I think there is even a command line in windows, not sure since I never use it...
Maybe I should for the servers...but then again, I have logmein that can do that as well

I found this article which includes screenshots.

http://www.vistarewired.com/2008/09/...-vista-startup