It’s been said, “Not owning a computer is the most secure computer.” While that’s true, we need to take steps to keep our computer secure.As ageneral rule, I like to shut my computer off when I’m away from it for long periods of time. That includes going out for the day or night, as well as going to sleep. Sometimes it’s hard to remember to shut it off. So in this article I’ll show you a way to shut your Windows XP computer off automatically.
Windows XP comes with a program called
shutdown.exe and is located in your system32 folder which typically resides under C:\Windows or the main folder where Windows XP was installed.So let’s set this up quickly:
1. Go to “Start->Control Panel” and click on “Scheduled Tasks” if you’re in “Classic View”. If you’re not in “Classic View” you are probably in “Category View”. In “Category View” you’ll click on “Performance and Maintenance”. Then click on “ScheduledTasks”. You’ll see the following screen. Double-click the “Add Scheduled Task” icon.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]2. Click “Next” on the “Schedule Task Wizard” screen (below).
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]3. Click the “Browse” button on the next screen that lists the different applications you can select from (below).
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]4. Browse to C:\Windows\system32 and select the program shutdown.exe (below).
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]5. After selecting shutdown.exe, select “Daily” for “Perform this task:” (below).
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]6. I sleep during the night.
That’s why I shut my PC down automagically at 3:00am (below). But, I
run some jobs automatically at 1:00am – virus scan and spyware scan,
which will be part of a future article. Feel free to adjust this time
to fit your schedule.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]7. You’ll be asked to provide a user name and
password that will be used to run this task (below). Warning: If you
don’t know your password, that ok. You can add or change it later. If
you don’t provide the correct password, you’ll get an error screen after
this step. However, you’ll still be able to finish this process.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]8. At this point you’ve successfully added a new
schedule task to run at 3:00am. However, let’s click on the “Open
advanced properties fro this task when I click Finish” checkbox and
click “Finish” so we can add some command line parameters to
shutdown.exe (below).
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]9. You’ll be presented with the following screen.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]10. Add the following command line
parameters as seen below and here – C:\Windows\system32\shutdown.exe -s
-t 60 -c “Daily Shutdown” -f. The -s stands for “Shutdown the
computer”. The -t 60 stands for “Set timeout for shudown to xx seconds.
Feel free to adjust that. You never know when you’re going to be
working at 3:00am, so it’s nice to have 60 seconds to prepare for the
shutdown. The -c stands “Shutdown comment” which shows up on the
screen when the PC is shutting down. And finally the -f stands for
“Forces running applications to close without warning”.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]11. There’s nothing to change on
“Schedule” tab. However, feel free to adjust anything that pertains to
your work environment or routine.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]12. I also leave the “Settings” tab alone. Again, change what you need to or experiment what suits your work style.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]13. This is the final screen
(below) that pops up when the task runs. You will have 60 seconds to
close applications if you need to.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]That’s it!! Now you can rest assured your PC is shut down and half way secure while you’re away from your PC.
Subject: How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows XP Computer 
Mon May 23, 2011 5:56 am
