This commodity volition show you how to utilize the remote shutdown command tool in Windows to remotely shutdown or restart a local or networked computer. This can be very useful sometimes if you lot have multiple computers at home or on your network that you want to chop-chop shutdown or restart.

You tin can even remotely shutdown a calculator over the Net, just you lot would first have to either VPN into the network or into the target estimator yous desire to shut downwardly. I'g not going to comprehend VPNs in this commodity, but if that's something you lot want to practice, experience costless to Google it.

Y'all can perform a remote shutdown from the command prompt using the shutdown control and its associated switches, from the remote shutdown dialog box, or from a batch file. I'll go through all three methods in this commodity.

Remote Shutdown Overview

In order to go this to work, at that place are a couple of steps you lot have to complete first otherwise you'll constantly become an Access is Denied (v) fault bulletin and it volition bulldoze y'all mad.

Step i: Firstly, in guild to remotely shutdown a reckoner on your network, you'll need to make sure you lot have Authoritative admission to the target figurer. If you're on a home network, the best manner to practice this is to make sure all computers are in the same workgroup and that they all take at to the lowest degree one Ambassador account with the same username and countersign.

You don't have to utilize the congenital-in administrator account on either estimator for this to work, but the user account you do utilise on both computers has to be part of the Administrators grouping on the local reckoner. If you become to Control Console and click on User Accounts and information technology says Administrator or Local Administrator, and then you're fine. Again, the names of the user accounts and the password have to be the same.

administrator

If you lot're in a corporate surroundings with a domain, y'all volition probably want to login using the domain administrator account. Using those credentials, you should be able to shutdown any other reckoner on the network, even if they are logged in using different credentials.

Stride ii: The second pace is to plow on File and Printer Sharing and to allow information technology through the Windows firewall. To do this, get to Command Panel and click on Network and Sharing Heart commencement. Click on the Change advanced sharing settings link in the left card and select the radio button for Plough on network discovery and Turn on file and printer sharing.

network sharing

Get back to the master Control Console window and click on Windows Firewall. Click on the Allow a plan or feature through Windows Firewall in the left menu.

file and printer sharing

Make sure y'all simply check the Home/Work (Private) box and not Public. You do non need to allow anything else through the firewall. You might read on other sites to allow WMI, Remote Shutdown, Network Discovery, etc, but I've tested information technology without whatever of those and information technology works just fine.

Step 3: Lastly, if you are trying to target a Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows eight reckoner remotely, you will need to modify the registry. Unless you do this, it simply won't work. You will only get the Admission is Denied message no matter what.

Open the registry editor by going to Starting time and typing in regedit. At present navigate to the following central:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SOFTWARE – Microsoft – Windows – CurrentVersion – Policies – System

Right-click on System on the left hand side and choose New – DWORD (32-bit) Value.

new registry key

A new value will pop up at the bottom in the right window and the text will be highlighted. Change the proper name toLocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and press Enter. At present double-click on information technology and modify the value from 0 to 1.

local account token filter policy

Click OK and close out of the registry. You lot don't need to restart the computer as the changes should take effect immediately. This registry key is needed because in Windows Vista and higher, an administrator account is stripped of its credentials when connecting remotely. This will allow the account to remain with authoritative privileges.

You lot'll also read on other sites to showtime the Remote Registry service if that's not running and to edit the local security policy by adding the Everyone group to Strength shutdown from a remote organisation policy setting. In my testing on Windows vii and 8, there was no demand to complete these tasks and you really shouldn't because information technology opens upwards your system to potential hackers.

Manifestly, you'll also need to know all the names of the other computers on the network. You tin do that past going to Control Panel and then clicking on Organisation.

computer name

Remote Shutdown via Control Prompt

The shutdown command is most flexible when using information technology from the command prompt because you can add together a bunch of switches to it, which allow you to customize the behavior. Get to Start, and then Run, and blazon in CMD. You lot can meet the list of switches past typing shutdown /? in the command window.

shutdown command help

You accept to use at least one switch in social club for the control to do anything. Basically y'all would type in shutdown /x /y /z where x, y, z are messages in the list to a higher place.

Here are a couple of the nigh common command switches and the actions they perform:

/s: Shuts down the calculator

/r: Restarts the reckoner

/m \\computername: The target remote computer to shut down

/f: Forces programs to shut immediately

/t: Will wait a certain amount of time in seconds before shutting downward or restarting

/a: Aborts a shutdown if you used a previous shutdown command with /t.

So for remotely shutting down some other motorcar on your network, you would type into the control prompt the following commands:

shutdown /m \\computername /r /f

This control will restart the computer named computername and force all programs that are still running to close.

shutdown –m \\computername –s –f –c "The computer will restart, please save all piece of work." –t 60

This control will shutdown the estimator named computername , force all programs that are running to close, show a message to the user and countdown 60 seconds before information technology shuts downward.

signed out

Remote Shutdown via Shutdown Dialog

If you don't like all those switches or using the control prompt in general, and so yous can bring up the shutdown dialog box. You can do that easily by just using the /i command switch for the shutdown command.

shutdown i parameter

The remote shutdown dialog volition at present appear as shown below.

remote shutdown dialog

Click the Add or Browse button to add computers to the listing. You can then run the commands on the unabridged batch of computers. If you click Add, you'll need to enter in the network name of the estimator in the format \\computername or merely computername, either works.

add computers shutdown

Of form, you need to know the actual calculator proper noun, which I mentioned how y'all tin decide above. So add as many computers to the listing every bit you like and then set your options. You lot can shutdown, restart or annotate unexpected shutdown.

You can too display a warning, if you similar, for all the same many seconds you choose and you tin type in a comment at the bottom which volition be displayed to users. That's about it!

Remote Shutdown via Batch File

Finally, you tin create a batch file and then that tin practice all of this by merely running the file. Alternatively, yous can schedule the batch file to be run at specific intervals or during specific events using Task Scheduler.

Just go to Notepad and type in the commands you would have typed into the command prompt:

shutdown –k \\computername1 –r
 shutdown –g \\computername2 –r
 shutdown –g \\computername3 –r

Then simply salve the file with a .BAT file extension by choosing All Files for Relieve as typeand add together .bat to the end of the file name.

bat file shutdown

This will restart three computers on my home network. You tin can put as many commands into the batch file equally y'all like, so experience gratis to experiment!

I've written an extensive mail on how to use batch files in Windows, so read that if yous are non familiar with batch files or job scheduler. Savour!