When my company was acquired by another, our PCs were reconfigured to the new company’s standards. It’s a laptop running XP SP2 (both before and after reconfigure).
Prior to that change, when I shut down (regardless if I chose the option from the start menu or after pressing crtl+alt+delete), the default option shown was “Shut Down.” Now it’s “Restart.” I know I can select “Shut Down” from the drop down, or press the S key twice to get it, but because I am a very lazy man, I want to how to change it. I haven’t found anything in help or on the Microsoft website.
One twist: When I am connected to the company LAN via ethernet or WiFi, the default is “Restart” but when I connect from home via VPN, the default is “Shut Down.”
Yeah, it’s pretty bad juju to have users attempting to mess with settings that are governed by system policies, even if the policies are set up badly.
I’m guessing someone in IT wasn’t paying attention, or simply goofed when they created the policies as our PCs (Win XP, SP2) will show whatever was used last in the Shut Down… menu. I can’t imagine why anyone in IT would want to default users to Restart.
Actually, there’s one good reason. They probably want users to leave their PCs on, but logged off at night, so that they can push updates and upgrades remotely overnight. Hard to do that when users turn off their PCs.