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

Yous can even remotely shutdown a computer over the Internet, but you would first have to either VPN into the network or into the target computer you want to shut down. I'm not going to cover VPNs in this article, only if that's something y'all desire to do, feel free to Google it.

You lot tin perform a remote shutdown from the command prompt using the shutdown command and its associated switches, from the remote shutdown dialog box, or from a batch file. I'll go through all iii methods in this commodity.

Remote Shutdown Overview

In order to become this to work, at that place are a couple of steps you have to complete commencement otherwise you'll constantly go an Admission is Denied (5) fault bulletin and it will drive you mad.

Step 1: Firstly, in order to remotely shutdown a calculator on your network, you'll need to make sure y'all have Administrative admission to the target reckoner. If you're on a home network, the best way to exercise this is to make sure all computers are in the same workgroup and that they all have at least one Administrator account with the same username and password.

You don't have to use the congenital-in administrator account on either computer for this to piece of work, but the user account you do use on both computers has to be part of the Administrators group on the local computer. If y'all go to Control Panel and click on User Accounts and it says Ambassador or Local Administrator, so you're fine. Again, the names of the user accounts and the password have to be the aforementioned.

administrator

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

Pace 2: The second step is to plow on File and Printer Sharing and to allow information technology through the Windows firewall. To do this, become to Control Panel and click on Network and Sharing Heart commencement. Click on the Alter advanced sharing settings link in the left menu and select the radio button for Turn on network discovery and Plow on file and printer sharing.

network sharing

Go dorsum to the main Command Panel window and click on Windows Firewall. Click on the Allow a program or characteristic through Windows Firewall in the left card.

file and printer sharing

Make sure yous only cheque the Dwelling/Work (Private) box and not Public. You practice not 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 it without whatsoever of those and information technology works just fine.

Footstep 3: Lastly, if you are trying to target a Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows eight computer remotely, you will need to modify the registry. Unless you exercise this, information technology just won't work. You lot will only get the Access is Denied message no matter what.

Open the registry editor by going to Start and typing in regedit. Now navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – SOFTWARE – Microsoft – Windows – CurrentVersion – Policies – Organisation

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

new registry key

A new value will popular upward at the bottom in the correct window and the text will be highlighted. Change the name toLocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and printing Enter. At present double-click on information technology and alter the value from 0 to i.

local account token filter policy

Click OK and close out of the registry. You don't need to restart the computer every bit the changes should take event immediately. This registry central is needed because in Windows Vista and higher, an administrator account is stripped of its credentials when connecting remotely. This volition let the account to remain with administrative privileges.

Yous'll also read on other sites to start the Remote Registry service if that's not running and to edit the local security policy by adding the Anybody group to Forcefulness shutdown from a remote system policy setting. In my testing on Windows seven and 8, there was no need to consummate these tasks and you lot really shouldn't considering it opens up your system to potential hackers.

Plain, you'll besides need to know all the names of the other computers on the network. Y'all can do that by going to Control Panel and and then clicking on Organisation.

computer name

Remote Shutdown via Control Prompt

The shutdown command is near flexible when using it from the control prompt because you can add together a bunch of switches to information technology, which permit you to customize the beliefs. Become to Start, and so Run, and type in CMD. You tin see the list of switches by typing shutdown /? in the command window.

shutdown command help

You accept to use at least one switch in order for the command to practise anything. Basically yous would type in shutdown /x /y /z where x, y, z are letters in the listing higher up.

Here are a couple of the well-nigh common command switches and the deportment they perform:

/s: Shuts down the computer

/r: Restarts the calculator

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

/f: Forces programs to close immediately

/t: Will expect 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 machine on your network, you would blazon 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 even so running to close.

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

This control will shutdown the computer named computername , force all programs that are running to close, evidence a bulletin to the user and countdown sixty seconds earlier information technology shuts down.

signed out

Remote Shutdown via Shutdown Dialog

If you don't like all those switches or using the command prompt in general, and so you can bring upwardly 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 will at present appear as shown below.

remote shutdown dialog

Click the Add or Scan button to add together computers to the list. You can so run the commands on the entire batch of computers. If you click Add, you'll demand to enter in the network proper name of the reckoner in the format \\computername or just computername, either works.

add computers shutdown

Of form, you need to know the bodily figurer name, which I mentioned how y'all tin determine in a higher place. So add as many computers to the listing every bit you like and so set your options. You can shutdown, restart or annotate unexpected shutdown.

You can also display a warning, if you like, for however many seconds you choose and you can type in a comment at the bottom which will exist displayed to users. That's about it!

Remote Shutdown via Batch File

Finally, you can create a batch file then that can do all of this past just running the file. Alternatively, you lot tin schedule the batch file to be run at specific intervals or during specific events using Task Scheduler.

Just get to Notepad and type in the commands you would have typed into the control prompt:

shutdown –thousand \\computername1 –r
 shutdown –m \\computername2 –r
 shutdown –m \\computername3 –r

And so simply salve the file with a .BAT file extension by choosing All Files for Save as typeand add .bat to the end of the file name.

bat file shutdown

This will restart three computers on my home network. You can put as many commands into the batch file equally you like, so feel free to experiment!

I've written an all-encompassing post on how to utilize batch files in Windows, so read that if you are not familiar with batch files or task scheduler. Enjoy!