hotkey to turn off monitor?

I'm looking for a way to make a hotkey (short cut, etc) on the keyboard, to shut off the monitor. Then when you move the mouse it will turn back on.

I've googled this for about an hour and I found some programs, but none of them are free... You would think such a simple thing there would be a lot more applications out there.

I read some where that nvidia's desktop manager has the ability to create a hotkey to shut off the monitor. But I can't seem to find their desktop manager anymore! They don't have it on their site, and I don't see any options for it in the control panel with the drivers.

I'd really like to beable to shut off my monitor (laptop or desktop) with a hotkey, then have it turn back on by moving mouse, hitting button on keyboard, like you would if your screen saver went on.

Any help would be great, thanks!

 

I found MonOff. Is this software you found that doesn't work?

http://www.shivaranjan.com/2007/10/...-power-down-your-laptop-monitor-from-windows/

I tested it; it seems to work correctly.

 

I have been using this free program for a week , and it works quite well , you just have to move your mouse to bring your monitor back to life.

 

Or, if you have programming experience, have lots of time, and be proud of yourself in the end, you can opt to program it yourself. I love programming, but I don't have the time to program anything right now or in the near future for that matter (Exams, after exams, after more exams). I've done this before, but I never published it because I knew there were millions of utilities out there that did the same thing. I think you need to do a SendMessage() API call to Windows telling it to turn off/turn on/standby. I forgot what the values were, but I'm sure you can find those relatively easily.

Have fun!

 

Nice find, should go in with the free windows software list.

 

Just put the laptop to sleep, which should turn off the monitor. The shortcut in Vista is "Windows Key, Right Arrow, Enter".

 

I'm using Wizmo to turn off my monitor -> http://www.grc.com/wizmo/wizmo.htm
You would have to create shortcut to the program with monoff parameter and then specify keyboard shortcut to run it (in windows shortcut properties)...

 

I use this on my laptop. You can make a shortcut on your desktop, or use Launchy or something. I have it mapped to my Dell MD button (see this thread).

Cheers...

 

If you're on a dell laptop you could try Fn + D, which turns off the display(s), including external, on my Latitude E6400.

 

Here is another app:

http://www.redmondpie.com/turn-off-your-notebook-lcd-with-one-click/

 

I use turn off lcd as well.