On a desktop PC, we have a separate monitor which can be disconnected from the PC at any time we want. It is connected to the PC cabinet using two cables – one is the video cable that carries video signals from the PC to the monitor and the second is the power cable. The video cable can be of many types depending on the hardware setup such as DVI, D-Sub, HDMI, etc. Similarly, power cable design can also vary depending on the country.
In absence of any of these two cables the monitor is turned off and shows blank screen. Furthermore, the desktop PC monitors usually come with a power switch using which we can manually turn off the monitor. But in the case of a laptop (notebook PC), no such methods can be used. The laptop monitor is internally wired and we cannot remove these cables. In addition, there is no power switch for the laptop monitor.
Because of these restrictions, we find it difficult to turn off the monitor on a laptop. But we can easily turn off the monitor on a laptop using a program called NirCmd. You will have to download this tool from Nir Sofer’s website. After decompressing this tool to a folder, we can give the following command to turn off the laptop screen:
nircmdc monitor off
This turns off the monitor for your laptop instantly. The monitor is turned back on when you move the mouse or tap on your keyboard. Of course this command works on all the monitors including the ones used on a desktop PC.
In case you do not want to instantly turn off the monitor but wait a few seconds, you can modify the command using the “cmdwait” parameter. After the “cmdwait” we have to specify the milliseconds for which the delay is given.
nircmdc cmdwait 5000 monitor off
The above command waits 5 seconds (5000 milliseconds) before turning off the monitor. The NirCmd command line tool has many more powerful features and therefore it should be used very carefully.
You can download NirCmd from https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html.