Scheduling A Windows Shut Down

Using www.google.com, I came up with this shareware program, which looks like it should do the job nicely:
http://www.evans-programming.com/schedule.asp

Among the many things it appears to be able to do, according to the site is:

Exit Windows - Schedule can log-off, reboot, shutdown or power off Windows.

There's a 30-day trial version that can be downloaded (about 5.5MByte).

Cost is US$49.95 if you want to keep using it after the 30 days.

I've downloaded it and have just set it running on a Windows XP machine to shut down in a few minutes...

...works just fine! But remember to tick the box that says, "Power off" and the other one that says, "Forcibly close applications".

Bob C

[This message has been edited by bcrabtree (edited 14 June 2002).]

Hi Fabian,

The following files can be used to shutdown your machine.
http://www.une.ltd.uk/restart.vbs
http://www.une.ltd.uk/shutdown.exe

running shutdown.exe you can just specify how long in the future you want to shut your machine off in seconds, so 1 hour is 3600 seconds 2 is 7200 seconds and so on. When you finish your days work, run the program, and put in a delay of how long the recording to tape will take (give yoursefl a bit of leeway, save your work before you leave) and then put in the name of your computer with \\ first, take the tick out of reboot, and force applications to shutdown without saving, and that will do it.

The other is a little bit more complicated (as it uses the command line scripting host) but it lets you shutdown your machine in a scheduled manner everynight. Say you wanted to shut down your machine at 11.59pm (to make it easier) every night. First you would need to create a batch file in notepad.

On the first line write

cscript Restart.vbs /S MyMachine1 /F

with 'mymachine1' being your computer name. Save the file as shutdown.bat somewhere logical. I usually create a directory called C:\bats for ease of use.

Then go to Start > settings > control panel and choose scheduled tasks. Choose Add scheduled task > Next > Browse... and go to where the bat file is located and select it. Give the task a name (probably shutdown), and choose daily > next, and choose the time you want it to run, and it if it is to run weekdays, or everyday, or every other day etc. Select today's date as the start date. You will need to give a user name and password for the task to run under, so choose a user who has permission to shut down the machine, your user account should do this, and enter password and reconfirm. FInally choose finish, and that's it.

Both of the above methods will work, it depends on which one you would like to use.

Tim

Just a thought.

There was a command line that I used to use (not for a while now) seeing this thread reminded me.

I will try to find the ref to it. But from what I recall it forced a shutdown what ever was running! I think was also a variation that would put a PC into standby mode, asuming the motherboard etc supported that function.

I suppose it might be possible to set up Windows Task Scheduler to activate the command line?

Oops just saw that you are using W2k pro. What used was on W98se?

[This message has been edited by Searcher22 (edited 14 June 2002).]

Thanks everyone for your help.
I've downloaded Tim's suggestion, the shutdown.exe .
It works great except that when it shuts down everything, I get the annoying 'It is now safe to switch off your computer' screen and the computer stays on until I switch it off.
Is there any way to over ride this screen appearing to give me a proper shut down ?

Mmm, found the same thing using Win2000.

Did some searching with Google, and found a command line utility for XP (also called 'shutdown.exe') - http://www.budja.com/shutdown/

Seems to provide much the same options, but also supports going into standby and hibernation, and when I tried it with Win2000 it did power down the PC properly.

Tony

You will get the 'It is now safe to switch off your computer' screen if the W2K is not using ACPI.

Where as Win9X should auto shutdown if ACPI in not enabled, if ACPI is diabled in BIOS or you are not using a ACPI hardware abstraction layer (HAL) then W2K will not shutdown.

If the software uses the older APM instead of ACPI then you may also get the 'It is now safe to switch off your computer' screen.

Check that ACPI is enabled in BIOS and from the hardware section of the control panel / system. Also try the Win XP version, the HAL is almost identical so it should work.

Hi Bomag,

My Win2k installation runs in ACPI mode, and the command line utility for XP works OK with it.

So I think you are probably right about the older GUI based utility using the APM software interface.

Tony