How to use the remote shutdown command in Windows

Posted on May 26, 2008 at 5:31 am

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

You can perform a remote shutdown from the command prompt using the shutdown command and it’s associated switches, from the remote shutdown dialog box, or from a batch file. I’ll try to go through all three in this guide.

Remote Shutdown Overview

Firstly, in order to remotely shutdown a computer on your network, you’ll need to make sure you have Administrative access to that computer. If you’re on a home network, the best way to do 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 user name and password.

You can also have different Administrator account names across computers, but then you’ll need to make sure you add the Administrator account of one computer to the account list on the other computers. You’ll also need to know all the names of the other computers on the network. You can do that by going to Control Panel and then clicking on System. Then click on the Computer Name tab.

Remote shutdown is useful for managing multiple computers at once and especially useful for helpdesk technicians when they have to fix remote computers.

Remote shutdown via Command Prompt

The shutdown command is most flexible when using it from the command prompt because you can add a bunch of switches to it, which allow you to customize the behavior. Go to Start, then Run, and type in CMD. In the black command window, type in shutdown /? to see the list of switches.

You have to use at least one switch in order for the command to do anything. Basically you would type in shutdown -X -Y -Z where X, Y, Z are letters in the list above.

Here are a couple of the most command switches and what actions they peform:

-l: Logs off the computer

-s: Shuts down the computer

-r: Restarts the computer

-m \\computername: remote shutdown of a computer

-f: Forces programs to close immediately

So for remotely shutting down another machine on your network, you would type into the command prompt the following commands:

shutdown –m \\computername –r –f

This above command will restart the computer named computername and force all programs that are still running to die.

shutdown –m \\computername –r –f –c “The computer will restart, please save all work.” –t 60

This command will restart the computer named computername, force all programs that are running to die, show a message to the user, and countdown 60 seconds before it restarts.

Remote Shutdown via Shutdown Dialog

If you don’t like all those switches, etc, or using the command prompt, then you can bring up the shutdown dialog box. You can open the dialog window by clicking Start, click Run, type CMD and typing shutdown -i and in the blank DOS window.

A window similar to the one below will appear:

Click the Add or Browse button to add computers to the list. You can then run the commands on the entire batch of computers. If you click Add, you’ll need to enter in the network name of the computer in the format \\computername. You can even add your own computer to test it out and make sure it works.

Of course, you need to know the actual computer name, which I mentioned how you can figure out above. You’ll also need Administrative access. You can determine this by going to My Computer and typing \\computername into the address bar and seeing if you can get access without having to be prompted for a password.

So add as many computers to the list as you like and then set your options. You can shutdown, restart, or logoff. You can also display a warning for however many seconds you like. You can type in a comment at the bottom which will be displayed to users. That’s it!

Remote Shutdown via Batch File

Finally, you can create a batch file so that you can do all of this by just clicking on a file! Or you can even schedule the batch file to be run at specific intervals using Windows Scheduler.

Just go to Notepad and type in the commands you would have typed into the command prompt:

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

This will restart three computers on my home network. You would of course replace computername1 with the actual names of your computers. Then simple save the file with a .BAT file extension. You can put as many commands into the batch file as you like, so feel free to experiment!

I’ve written an extensive post on how to use batch files in Windows, so read that if you are not familiar with batch files. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: remote shutdown, remote shutdown command, remote windows shutdown, remote windows xp shutdown, network remote shutdown, remote computer shutdown

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7 Responses to “How to use the remote shutdown command in Windows”

Hiensen said on : June 5th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

does not work, ive tried the -s and replaced it with the /s nothing….i can do it locally..in other words i can do it off my machine…but not remotely,

All the computers are setup on the same network, i know all the names and Ip’s even their MAC ID.

ive created a batch file…named it like… computer1.bat changed..still nothing..

im running WINDOWS HOME and the others are winxp pro,
which doesnt matter, cause ill use a XP PRO on each other, they still dont work. i used the GUI version the cmd\shutdown -i and added the computer through there, still cant do it.

any thoughts.. besides not using XPHOME or windows.

HAROLD said on : June 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

Na sua matéria ::Como usar o comando shutdown remoto no Windows:: verifiquei que o nome real do computador é obrigatório. Ok. Existe algum comando para fazer isso via IP. No caso me refiro ao uso de algum equipamento ligado a rede sem autorização do osupervisor. Nesse caso não há como saber o nome, porem o IP o DNS pode acusar.
Abraços
Harold

edson said on : June 13th, 2008 at 2:39 am

hola amigos tengo un problema
que cuando hago el shutdown para apagar las pc locales ,todo normalazo ,configuro la maquina que deseo apagar en herramientas administrativas/seguridad locallocal/asigancion de derechos/forzar apagado/agrego un usuario.
todo normal cuando lo pruebo funciona bien mediante el cuadro de dialogo de shutdown-i
pero elproblema es que cuando apago la maquina y la prendo y quiero probrar otra vez ,todo se borra
como en el principio ¿porque?
me podrian ayudar por favor

elyova said on : June 26th, 2008 at 5:48 pm

no pues esta chido ojala y tu puedas tener mas sobre este tema porke casi nadie lo maneja osea yo me mate la cavesa buscando ke eran esoso simbolos de (-M-s-t-c-r yy 60 y todos los demas) y porfin encontre esta pagina gracias

elyova said on : June 26th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

pues eso ke dise el vato es muy interesante pero todo eso es un virus bueno eso disen ke se te apaga la compu tu namas pon en http://www.youtube.com esto:::

como crear un virus en acsesos directos

y ya te sale todo esto pues sige los sigientes pasos

1° crea un acseso directo y despues te sale un cuadro y pon lo sigiente

shutdown -s -t 60 -c “y pones algun comentario”

y despues pones ASEPTAR y te va asalir otro cuadro y le pones

Internet Explorer y ya esta listo

y luego con el boton secundario le apretas propiedades y dodne dise cambiar icono

y le pones el de internet explorer y ya esta listo

Fabio said on : August 6th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

Ola amigo, vc criou um post justamnete que estou estou pecisando, mas naum consegui fazer funcionar o comando, sera que podria me dar uma forcinha, seguinte, tenho como servidor um Windows 2000 Server e as estações são todos Windows XP, num total de 15 Maquinas ok!, as maquinas começam com o seguinte nomes, Micro-01 Micro-02 e assim por diante, ficaria muito agradecido se pudesse me dar uma forcinha sobre isso viu.

Desde ja agradeço por sua atenção

Fábio

msn: visualmidia@andranet.com.br

Gowtham said on : August 28th, 2008 at 9:06 am

Hi I want to clarify one thing
If you are login as a guest or any other limited account user in a particular client in a network. If you want to shutdown the system which is login as a Administrator. Then how will you do this?
If any one have some idea means please share with me. My email ID is given below
m.r.gowthamkumar@gmail.com