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.
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Hey, Bill. Is there any way to make it give a longer warning time than “less than a minute”? Sometimes it’s not enough time for me to save everything I’m working on or finish a conversation or whatever.
I also wish there was a way to abort it if I am working on something important and need to keep going. Once it notifies you, it doesn’t seem to affect it if I go into task scheduler and stop it.
LS, Use the -t option to specify the number of seconds before shutdown (i.e. -t 60 -t 120 etc)
You can type shutdown -a at a command prompt at any time to abort the shutdown. The -a option means abort.
dustinfox, thanks so much for the info. Do I specify the -t under ‘arguments’?
Actually, if you look at the screen shot above showing the shutdown options, it is a forward slash not a dash. So yes, you would include a /t90 if you wanted 90 seconds or a /t120 if you wanted 120 seconds.
Here is what mine looks like:
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 90 /c “System will be shut down in 90 seconds. Please exit all programs”
dustinfox: you are awesome. thank you!
Thanks Bro. Helped me a lot.
Hey there,
I think I pretty much followed you’re instructions but somehow I don’t get the task started. When I see the summary screen I click Finish but the task just won’t appear in the Active Tasks List. Where’s the magic button to tell my PC: “Yes I really really do want to shut you down!” …?
Can you use this to just logoff? What would the command be?
Drew » Yes try the /l switch. Place it where the arguments go. See screenshot above in the middle of the article where the /s is but just use /l
Good luck.
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