Shutdown Your Computer Without Using the Shutdown Menu
The other day we got an email from someone who couldn’t get their start menu to open. We told them to simply reboot their computer and the start menu should work just fine. The person wrote back to us and said she couldn’t find any way to shut down her computer because she couldn’t access her start menu (Windows 7) so she used the power button to restart her computer. Well that’s one way to do it, but not the right way.
It kind of dawned on us that we should have included a simple trick in our newsletters on how to such down any PC quickly and easily with out using the start menu and this works in all versions of Windows including Windows 7, Windows 8.x and Windows 10.
So, if for some reason you can’t shut down your computer from your start menu — you have an option that many people don’t now about. It’s been part of Windows for a long time.
You can try this trick even if you’re not having problems. It will terminate all running processes and programs in 30 seconds – and you’ll have no option to cancel the shutdown sequence. So if you want to try this tip, be sure you don’t have any unfinished work open. If you do, you’ll lose it.
OK here’s are the tricks:
To shutdown your computer:
Press the Windows Key + R
In the command line type shutdown /s
Press Enter
Your computer will shut down in less than a minute.
To restart your computer:
If you want to restart your computer use shutdown /r
Pretty easy. Pretty quick.
Caution: Make sure you close anything you’re working on. If you don’t you’ll lose your work.
And yes you can also the keyboard and mouse to sign out of your user account. Not the same as shutting down exactly, but if you’re having problems it might work.
On Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and choose the Sign Out option.
Here is another way to shut down your computer
Make a short cut and insert the following
%windir%\System32\SlideToShutDown.exe
I use this every day
Nice tip. Does not work on Windows 7 though. Not sure this is as fast Shutdown /R or Shutdown /S since you have an extra step of swiping or clicking to shutdown. But it’s a different way. Just goes to show you that there are always more than one or two ways to do things on Windows.
Create desktop shortcuts such as:
shutdown.exe -r -t 00 for restart
shutdown.exe -s -t 00 for shutdown
shutdown.exe -L for log off
Hi TC:
My computer cannot find shutdown/r or shutdown/s
Hi Bev,
It won’t work the way you typed it, because you left out the space:
It’s SHUTDOWN /R and SHUTDOWN /S
Not SHUTDOWN/R and SHUTDOWN/S
When typing command they must always be exactly as shown – spaces are just as important as letters and symbols.