Automatically turn XBox controller off with PC

If you have a wireless XBox controller for PC, then you cannot turn the controller off without removing-and-reattaching the battery pack. Further, if you shut your computer off, the XBox controller will keep trying to find the wireless receiver until it drains the battery.

This project is a ‘shutdown’ script which you can use;

• Set it as a shutdown script so that it always turns the XBox controller off when turning your PC off
• Call it directly to turn the XBox controller off

Get Powershell script or Get Executable

Setup

To set it in your shutdown,

Click Start > Run…

gpedit.msc

Go to startup/shutdown scripts:

Under the scripts tab, add the powershell script (adding to the PowerShell tab didn’t work for me, I used this tab instead):

Or add the EXE directly:

Apply and close.

Finally, Start > Run…

gpupdate /force

How it works

This script makes use of an undocumented feature of xinput1_3.dll.

These methods, along with their ordinals are:

    # 100:
    DWORD XInputGetStateEx(DWORD dwUserIndex, XINPUT_STATE *pState);

    # 101:
    DWORD XInputWaitForGuideButton(DWORD dwUserIndex, DWORD dwFlag, unKnown *pUnKnown);

    # 102:
    DWORD XInputCancelGuideButtonWait(DWORD dwUserIndex);

    # 103:
    DWORD XInputPowerOffController(DWORD dwUserIndex);

The script or executable simply invoke ordinal 103 with the index of the XBox controller.

    [DllImport("XInput1_3.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, EntryPoint = "#103")]
    internal static extern int FnOff(int i);

And then invoking FnOff(0)

To turn off multiple controllers you would simply invoke FnOff(1) and 2 and so on.