How to configure computer shutdown? Turning off your computer using a timer How to schedule your computer to turn off Windows 7
There are situations when we need to leave our computer turned on for a long time. This may be due to the PC operating at night, when large files are downloaded, or when there is a long installation of operating system updates - the fact is that it becomes necessary to automatically turn off the computer without direct user intervention. In this material, I will tell you how to turn off your computer after a certain time, and also introduce the reader to tools that can help us with the planned shutdown of our PC using a timer.
Turn off the computer automatically at a specified time
How to turn off your computer after a certain time using Windows tools
If you need to turn off your computer using a timer, the simplest and most convenient solution is to use the tools built into the Windows OS. A special team will serve us with such tools. shutdown, as well as a task scheduler built into the system.
How to use the Shutdown command
To use this command, press the Win+R key combination, and in the line that appears, enter:
shutdown -s -t 3600 /f
- s– completion of work;
- t– indicates the time in seconds after which our PC will be turned off. That is, 3600 is 60 minutes (1 hour). Instead of this number, you can enter your own, after first calculating how long the time you need will take in seconds;
- f- from English “forced” - forcibly. Tells the system to forcefully shut down all active applications, meaning no program can prevent your PC from shutting down.
After you click on “Ok”, you will receive a system notification that your computer will shut down after a specified time. If you suddenly change your mind, then press Win+R again and in the line that appears, type:
and this function will be deactivated.
How to use the task scheduler
Using this scheduler, you no longer need to think about how to turn off the computer after a certain time, the program will do everything for you thanks to the schedule you created. Please note that this feature exists in Windows operating systems starting from version 7.
So do this:
- Click on the "Start" button;
- Enter taskschd.msc in the search bar and click OK. The task scheduler window will open in front of you;
- Click on "Action" in the top left;
- Select the “Create Basic Task” option;
- In the window that appears, enter the appropriate name, for example, “Automatic shutdown of Windows” and click on “Next” at the bottom;
- Next, you will need to select the shutdown frequency. If you want to do this every day, for example, at 3 am, then select “Daily”, otherwise select another option and click on “Next”;
- In the next window, determine the shutdown time and click on “Next”;
- In the “Action” option, select “Run the program” and click “Next” again.
- In the line under the inscription “Program and script” we write:
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe
In the argument field we type:
How to use a bat file to shut down your PC automatically at a given time
An effective answer to the question of how to turn off a PC after a certain time is to use a bat file. When you click on such a file, your computer will shut down after the required time.
Open notepad and enter:
if %time%==01:00:00.00 goto:b
shutdown.exe /s /f /t 60 /c “Good night, your computer is shutting down”
- Save this file called shutdown.bat (make sure it is shutdown.bat and not shutdown.bat.txt) on your desktop.
- If necessary, activate it by clicking on it.
- You'll see a blank Command Prompt screen, then simply minimize it and continue with your business.
- At the right time (in this text it is one in the morning) you will see a message about turning off the computer and your PC will turn off.
- You can change the shutdown time by specifying other numbers instead of “01:00:00.00”.
We turn off the computer at a time determined by us using programs
In the question of how to turn off the system after 10 minutes or after an hour, third-party software applications that need to be installed on your computer can also help. These are products such as PC Auto Shutdown, Wise Auto Shutdown Software and a number of others.
PC Auto Shutdown - shutdown the PC using a timer
This PC Auto Shutdown application for Windows OS will allow you to shut down your computer after the desired time. To take advantage of its functionality, do the following.
Some users need to configure the computer to turn off by time or even on scheduled days at certain times. The reasons can be different and the most banal one is that you already start watching some movie at night and don’t want the computer to work until the morning if you suddenly fall asleep :) The same function is used by some on TVs and still follows the same rules reason.
And the most interesting thing is that such a function in a computer is far from lying on the surface. It seems like a computer is such an omnipotent device, but such a banal function is hidden somewhere that a beginner will never find it!
So, from this article you will learn how, using a simple command in the Windows console, you can configure the computer to turn off after a certain number of seconds, as well as how to configure the computer to turn off at a certain time on certain days!
Beginners should not be intimidated by the words “Console”, “Command Line” and the like, since we are not talking about programming and other complex tasks! I will show you an example and you will understand everything...
So, now we will look at 2 ways to turn off the computer on time:
Simple shutdown of the computer after a specified number of seconds;
Turn off the computer on a specified day and time.
How to set a timer to turn off the computer?
To implement this task, we only need the Windows command line.
In any operating system, you can quickly find the command line through a search. For example, in Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, open the Start menu and type “cmd” in the search box at the bottom. The Command Prompt application appears in the list.
If you have Windows 8, then also open “Start”, then click on the search icon on the right:
In the field that appears, type “cmd” and the Command Prompt program will immediately appear in the search results:
And finally, if you have Microsoft's latest Windows 10, the default search icon will be located right next to the Start button. Click it, enter “cmd” and see the “Command Line” application:
To complete our task, you may need administrator rights, and therefore, in order not to later have to look for the reason why shutdown by timer may not work, let’s run the command line as an administrator. To do this, right-click on the program icon and select “Run as administrator”:
You should see a black command line window that looks like this:
Please note that if you have in this window instead of the path " C:\Windows\system32" the path to the user's folder is specified (for example, " C:\Users\Ivan"), this means you launched the command line not as an administrator, but as a regular user! In this case, it is better to close it and open it again as an administrator.
After the command line has been launched, all that remains is to enter one command correctly and you’re done!
To shut down and restart your computer, use the “shutdown” command in the Windows command line.
Type the following on the command line:
Where 3600 is the number of seconds after which your computer will shut down. If you press the “Enter” button on your keyboard now, your computer will be turned off in 1 hour, since one hour is exactly 3600 seconds. It’s very easy to calculate :) We know that there are 60 seconds in one minute, and since there are also 60 minutes in an hour, we multiply 60 by 60 and get 3600. For example, 1 hour 20 minutes is 4800 seconds.
Now regarding these characters “/s” and “/t”.
These are the 2 parameters that I specified for the shutdown command. The “/s” parameter means that the computer should shut down, and not reboot or simply log out. For example, to reboot you need to specify “/r” instead of “/s”. The “/t” parameter allows you to set the time before the command is executed. For example, if we specified the command without “/t”, i.e. like this “shutdown /s”, then the computer would turn off instantly.
Now, I think you understand everything. Just enter your time until you turn off your computer and press “Enter”!
The command line window will close and the timing will immediately begin. You will receive a warning message, for example:
A warning of this format is issued when there are only a few minutes left before the computer turns off.
But if you have set a long timer, for example, for an hour or more, then when it starts, you will simply receive a notification in the system area:
If you suddenly decide to cancel the timer, then you need to enter the command line again and run the following command there and press “Enter”:
At the same time, you will receive a notification in the system area that the scheduled shutdown has been cancelled:
This is what a simple scheme for turning off a computer using a timer looks like.
Now let's look at a more interesting option - how to delay turning off the computer for a certain day and specified time.
How to configure the computer to turn off on the desired day and time?
To implement this feature, we need the system utility “Task Scheduler” and “Notepad”.
Through the Windows Task Scheduler, you can schedule the execution of any program on a specific day and time, and even set a recurring task for different periods, for example, daily, weekly.
There is only one catch: you won’t be able to open the command line through the scheduler, as was done, and enter a shutdown command there. This is because to run we need some kind of file that can be specified in the scheduler and which will contain a command to turn off the computer.
This issue can be resolved very simply! You need to open notepad, write “shutdown /s /t 000” there, save the text document to a file with the extension “.bat” (for example, “Shutdown.bat”), and then point to this file in the task scheduler.
Now let’s look at it in detail, point by point:
Open Windows Notepad. It is available by default in any Windows system and can be found in the “Start” menu, in the “Accessories” category, or by searching Windows and typing “Notepad”.
In notepad we write: shutdown /s /t 000.
Here, using the “shutdown” command, we specified the action to shut down/restart the computer or log out of the system.
With the “/s” parameter we specify the action - shutdown the PC!
With the “/t” parameter we specify the timer before shutdown - 0 seconds and this means that the computer will turn off instantly without delay.
This is how it should look:
Resave the notepad file into a file with the extension “.bat”. To do this, in Notepad, click “File” > “Save As”.
In the save window, indicate the location where the file with the command to turn off the computer will be stored, after which we indicate any file name, but make sure there is “.bat” at the end and not “.txt”:
For example, like mine - “Shutdown.bat”. The name before “.bat” can be anything!
If you saved the file correctly, it will look like this on the system:
If it looks like a regular text document, then you most likely forgot to specify the ".bat" extension when saving, so please do this step again.
What kind of BAT file is this? A file with the “.bat” extension allows you to execute Windows commands one after another, as well as various scripts. In our case, only one command is written - turn off the computer immediately.
Open the task scheduler and configure the launch of the created Bat file.
The task scheduler is also built into all Windows systems by default and can be found by searching or through the control panel: “Control Panel” > “System and Security” > “Administrative Tools”.
This is what the task scheduler looks like:
In it on the right, in the “Actions” window, open the “Create a simple task” item:
The wizard for setting up the scheduled task will open, where you need to go through several steps. In the first window that appears, enter the name of the task, for example, “Turn off the computer” and click “Next”:
At the next step, you need to note when the planned task will be executed? It depends on when you want to turn off your computer. For example, you can configure a task to run daily and then you will need to specify the execution time. You can set up a weekly shutdown and then you can select specific days and times to complete the task.
And if you just want to set up a one-time setup to turn off the computer on a certain day and time, then select the “One time” option.
Now, depending on which shutdown period you set in the previous step, you will need to specify the shutdown month/days/time. If you specified a one-time execution of the task (“One time”), then you only need to select the shutdown day and time.
You can enter the date manually using numbers or select it using a calendar.
Having configured the shutdown date and time, click on the “Next” button:
At the next stage, we select an action for the task. Check “Run the program” and click “Next”:
In the next window, select our created file with the extension “.bat”, which contains the shutdown command. Click on the “Browse” button and select this file on your hard drive, then click “Next”:
In the last window, select the item marked in the image below and click “Finish”:
This option means that after clicking “Finish”, an additional properties window for the created task will open. We need this to enable the program to run with administrator rights.
A window will open in which, on the first “General” tab, check the “Run with highest rights” item at the bottom and click “OK”:
All! The scheduled task has been created. Now, as soon as the date and time you specified arrives, the computer will immediately turn off.
If you suddenly want to change any parameters of a scheduled task, then open the task scheduler again, select “Task Scheduler Library” on the left side of the window, right-click on the task you created in the list in the center, and select “Properties” from the menu that opens :
A window will open where, on several tabs, you can change all the parameters that you configured!
In this way, you can configure the computer to turn off by time (timer), as well as schedule the shutdown for any day and time, and even set up the task to be performed regularly. I am sure that this opportunity may be useful to someone.
See you in the next articles :)
After all the applications you have launched have completed their tasks, the computer may continue to work for a long time, which in turn negatively affects the resource of the components installed in the PC and saves energy. Today we will talk about how you can schedule your computer to automatically shut down using the shutdown.exe command.
If you often leave your computer turned on at night, for example, so that some applications complete their processes and tasks, then you are well aware of how this negatively affects energy savings, and therefore the family/personal budget. Moreover, constant, round-the-clock operation of the computer also negatively affects the resources of the components installed in the PC (they run out faster). Therefore, today we will tell you how you can automatically shut down a computer running the Windows 7 operating system.
How to configure automatic computer shutdown?
If your computer could turn itself off after a certain period of time you set, you can use the tool built into Windows 7 by default, more precisely the “shutdown.exe” command. This is done very simply.
Open the Windows command line, to do this, click on the “Start” button, in the menu that opens, select “All Programs”, then “Accessories”, and then run the command line as an administrator.
In the window that opens, enter the following command: shutdown.exe –s –f –t 720. Click “Enter”.
Let's take a closer look at this command. The “-s” value lets the system know that the computer needs to be turned off. If instead of the “-s” key you specify the “-r” parameter, then instead of shutting down the computer, it will reboot; if you enter “-l”, the system will end the current user session by exiting to the account selection window.
The “-f” switch will force the shutdown of any currently running application or program.
The “-t” parameter tells the system after what time the computer should automatically shut down. The value for the “-t” parameter is specified in seconds. In our example, this parameter is set to 720 seconds, which is equivalent to 12 minutes.
By the way. When the time comes to turn off the computer, 10 minutes before, the system will display a message about this on the screen.
If for some reason you change your mind about turning off the PC, then you should cancel this action on the command line by entering the command: shutdown.exe –a.
You can, of course, do without the command line by setting up automatic shutdown of the computer using additionally installed third-party software, which we will talk about later on the pages of the site. However, we do not recommend doing this, as each program makes its own entries in the registry, which in turn litters it and the PC begins to work slower.
Turning off a computer using a timer is a very typical task that many users face. However, not everyone knows how this problem can be solved. In this article we will talk about how to turn off your computer using a timer in Windows 7, 8, 10 and XP. To solve this problem we will use the command line, task scheduler and third-party programs.
Turn off the computer using a timer using the command line
The easiest and fastest way to shut down your computer using a timer is to use the “shutdown” command, which works equally well in Windows 7 and other versions of Windows. This command can be executed from the command line or using the Run menu.
The shutdown command has many parameters that allow you to fine-tune the process of shutting down your computer. Below we will look at the most basic of them:
- /s – Shut down the computer;
- /h – Switch to hibernation mode;
- /f – Forces termination of all open programs without warning the user;
- /t – Set the timer in seconds.
In order to shut down the computer using a timer using the shutdown command, we need to use the /s (shutdown the computer) and /t (set the timer) parameters. Thus, the command to turn off the computer will look like this:
- Shutdown /s /t 60
After executing such a command through the Command Prompt or Run menu, the computer will shut down after 60 seconds.
If you want to reboot the computer using a timer, then instead of the /s parameter, you need to use the /r parameter. The same thing with hibernation mode. We use /h instead of /s and the computer, instead of turning on, will go into hibernation mode. You can also add the /f option. In this case, shutdown (reboot, hibernation) will begin immediately, and all running programs will be closed without warning the user.
The disadvantage of this method of shutting down the computer is that the shutdown task is created only for one time. If you need to turn off your computer on a timer daily, then you need to use Task Scheduler or third-party programs.
We use the scheduler to turn off the computer using a timer
Windows 7, 8, 10 and XP operating systems have a very powerful tool available called Task Scheduler. You can use it to turn off your computer using a timer. To open Task Scheduler, launch the Start menu (or Start screen tiles if you're using Windows 8) and search for "Task Scheduler." You can also launch the Task Scheduler using the “taskschd.msc” command.
After starting the task scheduler, click on the “Create a simple task” button. This button is on the right side of the window.
Then we are asked to indicate when we want to complete this task. You can select "Once" if you want to timer off your computer only once. If you need to turn off your computer using a timer daily or in another mode, then you can choose another option that is more suitable for you.
At the next stage, you need to specify the triggering of this task.
After this, we need to enter the shutdown command as well as startup parameters. How the launch parameters of this command are used has already been discussed above.
That's it, the task to turn off the computer using a timer has been created. You can view it in the Assignment Library.
From the context menu (right mouse click) you can manage the created task.
You can run, complete, disable, delete, or open the job properties.
Programs for turning off the computer using a timer
If the described methods for turning off a computer using a timer do not suit you or seem too complicated, then you can turn off the computer using programs from third-party developers. Below we will look at several such programs.
A powerful free program to turn off your computer using a timer. Using the PowerOff program you can configure almost any little thing. On the other hand, due to the huge number of functions, the interface of this program is too overloaded. Which can be very difficult to figure out.
A small program to turn off your computer. The Switch Off program is equipped with a small number of functions and has an easy and intuitive interface. The program is equipped with a built-in web server that allows you to turn off your computer via a local network or via the Internet.
The developer of this program for turning off the computer using a timer claims to support only Windows 7, 8 and XP. Although it should work on Windows 10 without problems.
When working with the Windows operating system, it is sometimes necessary to configure the computer to shut down. Most often this is necessary for users or system administrators, who almost never turn it off. This is especially true for computers that operate as servers for receiving or transmitting data. In this case, the button Shutdown"it is better to reprogram to another mode ("" or " Dream»).
How to customize the Shutdown button
When you need to turn off the computer, we click on “ Start" and the button " Shutdown».
If it is more convenient for you, the “ Shutdown“did not turn off the computer, but rebooted it or sent it to sleep, then this button needs to be reprogrammed.
Don't be afraid, we won't have to tinker with codes or look for any fancy settings.
In Windows 7, changing the shutdown setting is very easy and quick. Just right-click on the round Start button with the Windows 7 logo and select “ Properties».
In the window that opens " Taskbar and Start menu properties" on the " tab Start Menu", go to the entry " Power button action" and click on the button " Shutdown».
A list will open in which you need to select the action that suits you best. After all these manipulations, do not forget to click the button at the bottom of the window Apply", and then the button " OK».
This is how you can change the computer shutdown settings in Windows 7.
If something is not clear, watch the video below:
