How To Shutdown & Poweroff Microsoft Windows From Command Line Or Shortcut Key Combination

I will provide a simple utility for you to shutdown and power-off Microsoft windows. You can also configure it to shutdown on any keystroke combination. The following article will provide the reasons for needing this, how to setup on keystroke combination and where to download the utility.

Why?
We all know how to shutdown windows by navigating to Start menu. That facility may however not be available in some cases. A popular scenario I face is when my monitor is turned off and then there is a power-cut. The act of bringing the monitor back online (to visually shutdown windows) causes a sudden power-drainage which reboots the computer itself. You all know what happens when Microsoft Windows is rebooted without proper shutdown. You lose all your unsaved work and on restart it runs checkdisk to detect and fix bad sectors. In fact you can lose Forefox profiles (happened to me) or worse.

Often Windows (or even just the mouse) hangs without rhyme or reason. You can then use the keystroke combination to cleanly shutdown windows (assuming keyboard is still active).

Certain long-running tasks are better run overnight. It is safe and economical (not to mention green) to shutdown and power-off windows after the task is complete. You can use this utility to do just that.

How?
Using it simple. You can run it from command line or explorer or your desktop.

I will now show you a way to run it by assigning a shortcut key combination to it.
a. First save the file to any directory of your choice, preferably not on desktop.

b. Now create a shortcut to it from desktop -
1. Right-click on desktop, select New and then shortcut.
2. Browse and select the file. Then click Next.
3. Type a name, say Shutdown.
4. Click Finish.

c. Right-click on the shortcut created (on desktop) and click Properties. Click on Shortcut key textbox and type: Ctrl-Alt-S (press the control key then press alt key and then S key, without leaving the preceding key).

d. Click ok to save.

You are done!

Where?
Download Windows Shutdown and Poweroff utility.

Etc.
I have developed the file and have taken reasonable efforts to ensure it is free from any virus / trojans / malware. I use it myself. I have tested it on Windows 2000 and Windows XP but I expect it to work fine in other versions of Windows.

Use at your own risk. No warrantly implied or otherwise is provided.