Easy Way to shutdown in 2 hours

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is too handy not to share. :smiley:

There’s a bunch of times that I’m downloading some stuff in Firefox. I know it will take about 90 minutes to finish. Sadly, Firefox doesn’t include an auto shutdown option. Windows doesn’t offer this option on the start menu either. :rolleyes: I used to say “screw it” and leave the pc on all night. That wastes electricity.

You can use Windows Task scheduler. That’s a major pain in the ass. Especially when you want a one time, ad hoc event.

I found this article. It explains how to create a desktop shortcut that shuts down – 2 hours from now. Click it anytime you need it. :smiley: I use this shortcut several times a week. Best thing since sliced bread.

He also shows how to create a shortcut to abort the shutdown.

Very simple. Takes 5 steps. Anyone can easily do this without a lot of tech knowledge.

I did make one change. I included the path to shutdown.exe. It’s in c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe

In most cases, I find shutting down - two hours from now, perfect. That’s long enough to complete my downloads. You can change the time if you want.

http://www.techiesouls.com/2009/05/15/how-to-schedule-computer-shutdown-after-specific-period-of-time/

2

Another useful flag on the shutdown command is -f. It forces a shutdown even if one or more programs don’t want to close. It’s a little dangerous (it’s up to you to make sure you have saved anything that needs saving beforehand), but it means you won’t come back the next day to find that your computer never shut down because of some stupid dialog box or error message.

3

Good to know, I get that soooooo often.
Thanx!

4

Hmmf! I opened this to find out why the street named Easy Was was going to be shut down in two hours.

5

I can see where -f flag is useful. thanks

6

In fact I have a shortcut on my desktop with the target set to
C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe -f -s -t 0
and the shortcut key set to Ctrl+Shift+Alt S. I normally shut down either by double-clicking the icon or using the key combination. Like I said, slightly dangerous, but in my case not horribly so (I do virtually all of my “real” work [as opposed to playing around] via a Remote Desktop connection, so killing it still leaves the session running behind the scenes).

7

Neat trick.

Thanks.

8

Is there any way to do this, only with Standby?

9

I have %windir%\system32\shutdown.exe -f -r -t 00 on a shortcut on the desktop of my work computer. This forces all dozen applications I have running to shut down, then a reboot.

Now, what would be pure evil is if one were to put such a shortcut into someone’s startup group…