How to Shutdown or Restart Your Computer Another Way
First of all, this tip is for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
If you’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of trying to shutdown or restart your computer when everything seems to be frozen, it can be daunting. One way is to simply power off your computer, but that may result in unexpected problems.
Or if you just want to be more geeky, keep on reading.
There’s a way to shutdown your computer without accessing the Shutdown/Restart dialog, and it’s very easy to do.
Just press the Windows Key plus the R key to open a Run Dialog
In the Run dialog:
To shutdown your computer type SHUTDOWN and press enter.
To restart your computer type SHUTDOWN /R and press enter (Please note the space between SHUTDOWN and the slash.)
So the next time you can’t shut down your computer the normal way, or you just want to try something different, you have other options.
With Windows there is almost always more than one way to do things. Is that a good thing? We think so.
Don’t forget Alt – F4.
Alt F4 does not shutdown Windows, it closes the active window.
Back to school for you – the beauty of Alt-4 is it gives you the opportunity to shut down active windows – and then allows you to shut down the machine. If you have no active windows it shuts down the machine in the manner you want by using the pull down button.
Oh boy 🙂 Alt+F4 closes the active Window and program, it does not close all windows nor does it close all programs. The tip was just showing people another way to shut down Windows – just show they know. For instance, it would come in handy if the start menu didn’t work. Back to school? Open 5 programs.One of then will be on top. Now press Alt+F4 and tell me which window closes and which program closes – only the one on top. Anyone reading this can try it and see it’s true. You would have to do Alt+F4 for every window and program to shut every one down. Nice for another tip on how to close down programs without a mouse, but Alt+F4 does not magically shut down all program and window – only the active. But is that easier then clicking the X if they do have a mouse, touchpad or touchscreen?
What is a “pull down button”?
What do you do when your desktop computer will not shut down? When I push “shutdown”, my computer shuts down and instantly restarts — every time. This problem has been ongoing for a couple of weeks now. It ran perfectly and shut down before this period. I tried your tip above to shut down, and my computer did absolutely nothing!! I’m running Windows 10 update from 8.1, 64-bit and have two external hard drives plugged in. I’ve tried many, many suggestions to no avail.
This happened to me also. The problem was to put in a new Mother Board
Every time I shut it down it would reboot again all by it’s self.
Good Luck
Many new computers have the shut down button set to restart your computer rather than shut it down. On those computers, you have to hold the power button in until the computer shuts down. Or you can change what the power button does in Control Panel / Power Options.
You have me confused now as you started your comment talking about a frozen computer. Alt-F4 will often remedy that as a shutdown choice. I am not disputing the fact that if you have open (active) windows Alt-F will close an active window first. If you keep using Alt-F it will work through all the open windows until finally, it comes to the ‘shut down’ window. The pull-down button is the one on the right of the dialogue line and gives alternate shut down choices.
If all else fails have a look at http://bit.ly/28XhZmZ.
We never mentioned the F4 key in unfreezing or shutting down your computer. Please do read these articles again:
Read this:
Or Read This
We mentioned using the ALT+F4 key combo before as a way to close your browser when malware or a script is preventing you from closing it.
And indeed you can close any program using Alt+F4 – but it sure doesn’t shut down all open programs.
Why do some people think they know more than you do TC and try to correct you? You prove them wrong every time. Most of us are just happy and very grateful to get your help and advice. Keep up the good work, please.
I am sure many people know more than us…but anyone can see for themselves what ALT+F4 does 🙂