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Windows Command Line Shutdown

By: Gov't Mule

August 19, 2016

This is particularly useful when you're connected to a Windows system via RDP or a VPN tunnel and need to shutdown or reboot the system. Using the "Start" button when using RDP, the only options offered are "Logoff", then Disconnect or Lock. Not very useful when you need to reboot or just shut the system down from a remote location.By dropping to the command prompt, you can access the shutdown functions from the command line. Below are the commands:

shutdown -r — restarts
shutdown -s — shuts down
shutdown -l — logoff
shutdown -t xx — where xx is number of seconds to wait till shutdown/restart/logoff
shutdown -i — gives you a dialog box to fill in what function you want to use
shutdown -a — aborts the previous shutdown command....handy in case of an OOPS!
shutdown -h — hibernate (NOT help)One additional switch -f --- force the selected action

Example:To force an immediate reboot, enter "shutdown -t 0 -r -f" - without the quotes

To force a reboot after a specific waiting period enter "shutdown -t xx -r" - xx being the number of seconds to wait before running the command.

Thanks and I hope this was helpful to you.