Technology has advanced so fast recently that everything is now connected and many people now have their computers on 24/7. We read books on them watch television on them as well as many other things and have pretty much become the workhorse of the household and it would be nice to get them to automatic shutdown when we are not using them.
It is quite common to see computers hooked up to televisions via High-Speed HDMI Cables
Sometimes though there is notHing on the television so I watch something on netflix for example and while I can easily set the sleep timer on my TV I can’t set a PC shutdown timer or can I?
This short tutorial will show you how to setup a PC shutdown timer on your computer to perform and automatic shutdown of your PC after a set amount of time that is easily accessible from your desktop.
PC Shutdown Timer Shortcut Setup
1. Start by right clicking anywhere on your desktop and selecting the new option and then select shortcut to create a new shortcut on your desktop.
2. In the box that says “Type the location of the item” enter the following as we have in the image below
shutdown.exe -s -f -t 3600
We should probably explain how our PC shutdown timer works.
The shutdown.exe calls for the executable for the automatic shutdown to work and the -s is the shutdown command. It should be noted that if you don’t want to shutdown and just want to restart use -r and if you just want to logoff the current user use -l.
The -f asks for it to be a forced shutdown meaning that even if a program tries to interrupt the shutdown the PC will still shut down. You don’t have to use this but if a program fails to close correctly the computer will not perform the automatic shutdown.
Finally the -t is for the timer and this is in seconds. In our case we have set our PC shutdown timer to shut down after 60 minutes (3600 seconds)
3. Once you have entered the command click next. You will be asked to give your shortcut a name. We have called ours PC shutdown Timer. Click finish and you will now see a new shortcut on your desktop.
4. Upon clicking the shortcut you may either see a message pop up on your screen or a balloon notification in the bottom right notifying you that your computer will shutdown and the time it will perform the automatic shut down.
Disabling the shutdown
Should you need to disable and cancel the PC shutdown timer you can easily do this. Press the windows key (usually between CTRL and ALT) and the R key together. This will bring up the run box and in the run box type shutdown.exe – a
You will see a message or balloon in the bottom right that says the log off has Automatic shutdown has been cancelled. You could also create a shortcut to your desktop to cancel the shutdown if you like.
Alternatives
There are other ways you can set a PC shutdown timer such as the task scheduler but I personally prefer this one as it is accessible via one click and easy to edit.
If you wish to change the time for the Automatic shutdown timer simply right click on the shortcut and change the number of seconds in target (highlighted) to whatever number you want in seconds (3600 = 1 Hour, 7200= 2 Hours for example)
