How-To

Create a Shutdown or Restart Shortcut in Windows

If you’d like another way to shutdown your Windows system without using the Start menu – create a shortcut. Here’s how to do it and pin the shortcut to the Taskbar in Windows 7.

Right click on the Desktop and select New >> Shortcut.

Create Shortcut

Type: shutdown.exe -s -t 00 then Click Next.
command

Give the shortcut a name such as Power Off or Shutdown.

name-shortcut

The Shutdown shortcut appears on the Desktop. Right click it and select Properties.

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The Shutdown Properties windows opens. Select the Shortcut tab and click Change Icon.

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Now select the icon you want to use. Here I’m picking the familiar power off icon.

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After changing the icon, the Shutdown Properties Window stays up. Select Start Minimized from the Run dropdown menu. Click OK.

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Now drag the icon to the Taskbar and pin it.

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To create a shortcut to restart your system. Go through the same steps as above, but when the Create Shortcut windows comes up type: shutdown.exe -r -t 00 then click Next.

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Change the icon like you did for the Shutdown command. Then drag it to the Taskbar.

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If you want a few second delay before a Shutdown or Restart, type in a number of seconds after -t. For example, if you want a five second delay before a shutdown, type: shutdown.exe -r -t 05

Then when you double click on the shortcut, you’ll see the following message before the system shuts down.

shutdown-message

Creating a Shutdown and Restart shortcut works in XP and Vista too. You can also create a shortcut to lock your workstation.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. James Newton

    July 20, 2012 at 5:28 pm

    in one of the dialog boxes, you show “shortcut.exe -r -t00” with no space between the “t” and the “00” which causes the command to fail. You have it right everywhere else, but, of course, that one is the one I picked to follow… LOL…

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