Shut down your home PC on a schedule

You tend to leave your computer
alone during tasks that take a lot of
time, and often the system continues
to run even after completing the tasks.
However, you can shut down your PC
after a specified time using the command
“shutdown.exe”.
Click on “Start | All
programs | Accessories | Command
Prompt” with the right button of the
mouse and start the command line with
“Run as administrator”. Then select an
account with administrator rights and
enter the associated password before
confi rming with “Yes”. Then type the
command “shutdown.exe -s -f -t
3600” for example, behind the prompt.
Confi rm this with [Enter].
The option “-s” causes Windows to
shut down your system. Replace “-s” with
“-r”, to automatically restart the system.
With “-l”, Windows only logs out the
current user. The option “-f” force-closes
the running applications without any prior
warning. Then, you require the option
“-t” which helps you set the waiting time
before shutting down, in seconds. The
instructions given as example affect the
shutdown of the system after 3,600
seconds, i.e. one hour.
NOTE: Ten minutes before shutdown,
Windows alerts the user via a simple
dialogue. If necessary, the action can be
prevented with the command “shutdown.
exe -a”.