Well, here we go again. In addition to my How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows XP Computer I showed how to set it up so you can use the ShutDown.exe command to schedule and automatically shut your Windows XP computer off. In my How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows Vista Computer we stepped through the same idea. And now, here’s Windows 7. Guess what? Not too different. So let’s get going.
For this How To, I’m using Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). Hopefully not too many changes between now and the final version of Windiows 7 changes in regards to running a scheduled task. Below is the first screen shot after I clicked on the Start button and Control Panel. You’ll find the Scheduled Tasks under System and Security.
Click on System and Security and you should see the Administrative Tool selections at the bottom of the control panel window. Click on Schedule Tasks and you’ll be presented with the screen below.
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The Task Scheduler is pretty much the same in Windows 7 as Windows Vista. The Task Scheduler can look intimidating but it’s not too bad. Just move forward. We are going to look at one task and not all the extra stuff in Task Scheduler.
In the Actions column on the right, click Create Basic Task…
You’ll see the following window and I’ve already filled in the Name and Description of our task.
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After clicking Next you’ll see the Task Trigger screen. We want to shut down our Windows 7 computer in the middle of the night, every night so we’ll pick Daily.
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The next screen you’ll see is the Start Date and Time screen.
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The following screen is the Action screen. Let’s Start a program.
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The next screen you’ll see is the Start a Program screen.
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And finally the Summary screen.
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Let’s take a look at our task in the Active Tasks list.
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Double-click the Task Name if you need to work with the settings.
Here’s the screen when the task fires off and starts to automatically shut down Windows 7. A window pops up telling us that Windows will shut down in less than a minute. You can click on the Close button but that will just close that window and Windows itself will continue to shut down.
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There’s quite a bit of detail with the shutdown.exe command and here is the output when you run the shutdown.exe /? command at the command prompt in Windows 7. It lists the choices of how you want to run the shutdown.exe command.
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There you have it. Now you can automatically shutdown your Windows 7 computer.
What a great way to automatically shut down your pc when you want to. Seems like this would be on the Windows 7 menu system somewhere. Thanks. Pennsylvania College of Technology.
Is there any way to get it to not run on weekends?
Im trying schedule my sons pc to shut-down at 6 o’clock so he doesn’t stay up and miss school :P.
Never-mind just figured it out.
You have to set it to weekly and you can select each day individually if you wanted to know.
Thanks for the Windows 7 update on this very handy tool. I have Windows 7 installed as a 64 bit OS and it appears as though I have two versions of the “shutdown” program. One is in the “System32” folder and the other is in the “SysWOW64” folder. Does it matter which one I use? Should I use the SysWOW64 version?
Thanks!
@Dustin: Thanks for stoppin’ by Dustin. I don’t know the answer to this but if you try one of them and see which works. Sounds like some folks are having problems calling shutdown.exe from c:\windows\system32 and other calling from c:\windows\syswow64 if it even exists in that folder from some. Good luck and let us know your results.
Thanks Bill. I opened up the task scheduler in Windows 7 and began to create a basic task. When I got to the “Start a Program” screen, I clicked browse. At that point, Windows defaulted to the System32 directory. So I chose the shutdown command that was located there. Seems to work fine.
Thanks. I was looking for this for a long time.
Simple step by step instructions.
Easy to Do.
@Sri: Thanks Sri, good to hear.
Thanks. this is great! Very simple.
By the way, is there also a way to have my pc automatically put into sleep mode without using third party program?
Thanks
On you XP article you used this argument: -f which stands for “Forces running applications to close without warning”.
Is that not needed in Windows 7, as it will force everything to shut down anyway?
amigo queria saber se depois de ter feito isso o pc volta a ligar na mesma hora se eu tentar ou ele fica inativo ???
( porque eu vou durmir e o meu filho volta pro pc )
This was really helpful! Thanks alot!
How To Make a Shutdown Virus – Presentation Transcript
How To Make A Shutdown Virus In this presentation you will learn how to make a virus joke to your friends and shut down their computer. Replace one of their used icons on the desktop with a fake one . And when they try to open it, their computer will close.
… first step… Right click on the desktop and go to New -> Create Shortcut .
… second step… Type in the windows that appears: shutdown -s -t 60 -c "Virus Detection. Computer is shutting down." Instead of 60 you can put what value you want. It represents the time in seconds . And also between quotes you can put what message you desire.
… third step… Click Next and type firefox . You can write whatever you want.
… fourth step… We need to change its icon to look like Mozilla Firefox.
The ‘virus’ will look Mozilla Firefox.
Thanks for your attention and… … Shutdown more computer you can!!!! The only way is…
or simply go here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/16801-shut-down-windows-shortcut.html
http://www.tothepc.com/archives/pc-shutdown-restart-windows7-shortcuts/
I cannot wait to get Windows 7. I am one of those who bought a laptop and ‘had’ to get Vista because XP was no longer preinstalled. Anyway the more I see and read about Windows 7 the more it appears Vista should not have been released at all. Thanks for the tips.
@D Thomas: I definitely like Windows 7 a lot better than Vista. Less problems. XP still rocks though. I believe XP will be around for a long time until Microsoft crushes it. Thanks for stoppin’ by.
Thanks for the good post. Been looking for this for a while but just got round to doing it.
Thanks……..i was looking for this….and this site really helped me….thanks again..
Good One Bill. I was looking for stuff like this. Now I can happily goto bed listening to all my favourite music. Thanks a ton.
Many thanks for sharing, It’s so useful option, I’ll use it for sure…
Thanks again!
There are many software available for this.
SEO
@markpeterson – Why buy some software when the feature is available for free through the OS? This is simple.
Thank for the instructions. Works like a charm.
Is there a way to cancel the shutdown if you need to on a certain night?
@Ls: Either stop the task in task scheduler or adjust the schedule. Thanks for stoppin’ by, hope that helps.
@Bill, thanks! I will give that a try and see if I am fast enough! 😉
Regarding instant start up post…. NEC used to make a small pc (a bit bigger than your palm) that had instant-on because the operating system was ROM, which means it couldn’t be updated. Worked fine, but was obviously limited in what it could run.
Almost as good, dependening on what you need, are the ASUS motherboards that come with a built in LINUX on boot that gives access to the web and chat, etc…. but not your windows apps. It boots in 15 seconds on my machine. I use it to check stocks or weather … something short and sweet usually. You can then tell it to go ahead and boot to windows. It’s a nice compromise for instant on.
Very cool. I wonder why Microsoft has “hidden” the task scheduler in Windows 7. In Windows XP it was there in the Accessories menu in plain view. Now, one has to search for it via the search bar.
Thanks for the idea. I like to go sleep while listening to some audio books so this tool would be helpful to wake up without hearing my pc.
I’ve been using Windows 7 for months now and didn’t even know about this. Thanks.
thanks very much for this, now i can prank my roomy – do multi shutdown tasks with 10 min interval from 12am to 8am – freaking fb freak.. hehe, nah but seriously thanks for the infor (thumbs up)
This is very useful tip as I always keep my laptop powered on and sleep every night working on laptop!:)
Great article! One thing I wanted to point out is the /a option on shutdown.exe.
There have been times I’ve accidently pushed the power button on my machine and it started to shut down programs. Since it takes a while, I am able to open up a command prompt and cancel the shutdown by using the /a option!
What option in the task wizard do I pick for shutting it down after I manually ask it to install the updates and it installs them?
p.s. I stopped using the auto updates in Windows 7 after the darn thing rebooted for updates without warning me before I saved a file.
We do need to remember to shutdown our computers from time to time – via a restart or a turn off completely. This helps free up memory and help cool the CPU.
In my windows 7 there is no “System and Security” icon in the control panel. After poking around for awhile, I found “Task Scheduler” after clicking on the “Administrative Tools” icon in the control panel. Maybe some others have windows 7 setup like mine.
Mike » Thanks Mike. What version of Windows 7 do you have? Also, another way to find stuff is by clicking on an empty spot on the Windows desktop and pressing F1 for help. Then search on the term you’re looking for and you’ll typically find a link to the tool(s) you’re looking for.
Bill » I have Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit).
Thanks for the F1 tip – that’s even faster
I hope this can still be done with the windows 7 (complete) ,I never even thought Windows 7 has this. Now, I don’t have to tell my son to stop playing with my computer and go to sleep LOL. Thanks a lot!
I didnt know that it was so simple to automatically shut down Win 7. Cool. I like the descriptive and informative style of writing.
wow its nice article based on auto shut down you pc deeply described and well taken snapshots really enjoyed this article thanks
Wow, I’ve been looking for that. Previously, I used to write a small script to send the shut down signal and used to call it in Scheduler. But this one is so simple. Thanks for sharing, Bill.
Mike wrote on April 3, 2011 at 12:04 pm:
In my windows 7 there is no “System and Security” icon in the control panel.
In Windows, you can find most of the System Tools by going to, All Programs > Accessories > System Tools. It works the same way in Windows7 too.
This was very helpful thank you. We have one of those keyboards with multimedia remotes that we bound a button to do something similar. Thanks again
Im impressed. thankx for your help dude. I am really really impress that your have a deap knwoledge of Widows 7 and once again thankx for sharing your knowledge.
Hi i found you blog on google and found it both interesting and lnformative. Can You Provide A list Of all shortcats for Window 7 and window Xp
My keyboard has one of the silly sleep buttons which you always seem to press by accident. That aside I like W7 but like a few of the posters probably don’t use it to it’s fullest potential.
To Ashley Morrison,
You can change the action that takes place when you press the sleep button from keyboard.
Go to Control Panel > System & Security, Under Power Options, click on “Change what power buttons do”
Here you can change your sleep button to “Do Nothing” or other.
Thanks a lot. I was wondering how to do this and this post made it easy.
Very interesting, I tried it but I’m not used with the command.exe… I’m really a newbie with computers but I don’t give up 🙂
Great little tutorial. I’m using this to turn off my PC when it has finished recording TV shows in the middle of the night.
I tried and I made it! Thank you very much for the detailed guide for dummies (: