You can create a shutdown schedule for your computer to have your PC close down at the same time everyday.
If you know that you won’t be using your computer after a certain time each day, you can have Windows shutdown automatically. That’ll save on energy and is especially useful for those of us that don’t like to leave things running overnight.
The great thing about computers is that, unlike people, they don’t forget. Schedule a shutdown and the computer will turn off.
Create A Shutdown Task In Task Scheduler.
We’re going to use Windows Task Scheduler to create the shutdown task.
Click the Start button and type “task scheduler”, then click Task Scheduler ( system).
Create Basic Task.
What we want to do is have the computer shutdown at a specific time each day. To that, you add a task. A task is simply a function that Windows will carry out when certain conditions are met.
When the Task Scheduler opens, click Create Basic Task in the right hand panel.
Create The Shutdown Task.
The “Create a Basic Task” window opens. This is a kind of setup wizard that you follow to create the task.
In the Name box type a name for the task. Shutdown Task seems reasonable to me.
You could also add a description in the box below if you wanted to, but it isn’t required.
Click the Next button.
Setting The Trigger.
The trigger is just an event that happens that’ll course the task to run.
Since this task is going to be to shutdown the computer at a specific time, the trigger will be when that time is reached.
For a shutdown task, select the Daily option and click Next. Then set the time that you’d like your computer to close down.
Allow plenty of time, for example, if you usually finish with the PC at around 6pm, set the shutdown for 8pm. That’ll cover you for the occasional overrun.
Set The Action.
Closing down your computer is carried out by a program called Shutdown.exe. Yes I know, it is kind of strange that you start a program to turn off the PC, but there it is.
The Action is what Task Scheduler should actually do when the event is triggered.
So to turn off the computer automatically, you’ll want Task Scheduler to start the program Shutdown.exe.
Select “Start a program”, and click Next. Then type shutdown.exe into the program box.
Shutdown.exe Arguments.
Arguments are just the instructions that the program that’s being started up in the Action should follow.
In this case, the arguments will tell the program “Shutdown.exe” what it should do.
In the “Add arguments (optional)” box, type -s -f -t 60
- -s tells Windows to shutdown.
- -f forces any open programs or apps to close down.
- -t 60 is a sixty second waring that the PC is about to close down.
If you want more warning, change the 60 to something else, perhaps 90 for 90 seconds etc.
Finally you’ll see a summary screen detailing the settings that you’ve entered for the task. Click the Finish button and the Shutdown task will become active.
From now on, at the specified time every day you’re computer will pop up a waring and then automatically close itself down.
Cancelling The Automatic Shutdown.
There will inevitably be times when you’re still using the computer when the shutdown message appears. It might not be often, but it will happen.
When that happens there are 3 options available to you.
- Let the computer shutdown and then just restart it. That’s the easiest but it’s not always going to be convenient.
- Issue a “shutdown abort” command. Aborting the shutdown is easy to do but will require you to remember what and how to it. I’ll show you how to do that below.
- Create a shortcut that will abort the shutdown. By pinning a shortcut to the abort shutdown command to your taskbar, you can easily stop the PC from closing down with a single click. Again, I’ll show you how to do that below.
Abort The Shutdown Command.
To stop a scheduled shutdown, all you need to do is use the command shutdown -a
The -a simply stands for abort.
You can type the command into a Command prompt or PowerShell, or Terminal window.
Or you can use the Run dialogue box.
Press the Windows key and letter R on your keyboard to open the Run box.
Then type shutdown -a and press Enter.
Shutdown -a
Issuing the command shutdown-a does work and will stop a scheduled shutdown of your computer.
The problem is remembering what to do when the message “You are about to be logged out” appears. It’s all very well knowing right now, but will you remember what to do in 6 months time.
After all, you’re going to set the actual shutdown time to be a time of the day when normally you’ll have finished with the PC. So this shouldn’t be a regular occurrence.
In my opinion, creating a simple button to click to abort the shutdown is much more intuitive.
Create An Abort Shutdown Shortcut (Button).
Right click on your desktop and hover the mouse pointer over New. On the second menu, left click on Shortcut.
The Create Shortcut window will open. Type %SystemRoot%\System32\shutdown.exe -a into the box and click Next.
On the following screen, type a name for the new shortcut. You can sue anything you like, it’s just for your reference. Click the Finish button.
Changing The Shutdown Shortcut Icon.
The Abort Shutdown shortcut will appear on your desktop.
While it will work just fine, it’s not very noticeable. It has a standard shortcut icon and doesn’t really stand out from any of the others icons.
Personally I’d change the icon to be something much more obvious. Something that you can find in a hurry.
To change the shortcut icon, right click on it, and the left click Properties.
In the shortcut properties window, click the Change Icon button.
You’ll see a message pop up “Change Icon” , just click the OK button to continue.
Then the system icons window will open. Scroll along right to left to view all the available icons that you can choose from. Select something that’ll stand out from the crowd. Click the OK button and close the Properties window.
The Abort Shutdown shortcut will appear with its new icon on your desktop.
A quick double left click will stop your PC from automatically closing down.
Or you could pin the shortcut to your taskbar for a single click.
Edit The Shutdown Task.
Over time it you might want to change, or edit, the shutdown task in some way. Usually this’ll be to either change the shutdown time, or maybe to delete the tsk entirely. It’s easily done.
Open Task Scheduler again. Click Task Schedule Library in the left hand panel.
In the centre panel, you should be able to find the Shutdown Task that you created earlier.
If you want to delete the task completely, select it and then click the Delete option in the lower right hand corner.
To make changes to the shutdown task, double left click on it.
Edit Task.
All the options that you set up earlier, i.e. Triggers, Actions etc, are displayer as tabs across the top of the window.
So to edit the shutdown time, click the Triggers tab.
The Edit Trigger window will open, click the Edit button.
On the next window you’ll see all the original options. You can change anything that you want to. But generally most people will just change the time of the scheduled shutdown.
Summary.
Having your computer automatically close down every day can work great. The only thing to be aware of is that you might lose any unsaved work.
