How to shutdown and restart pc with a shortcut ?

By Ashish Mohta

There are several ways you can shut down your personal computer but most of them are tedious and involve more than one step. Now imagine if you are in a hurry and you just want to shut down by one click what would you do? Honestly you just cant do anything other than the tedious stepped steps. In this post I will tell you 2 ways you can make shutdown little quick. First, let us take a quick look on the various methods available running on Windows Xp and then we will see how to make it quick ?

Methods available for shutting/ restart your pc/ computer

  • Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off
  • The Window Key -> press letter u (twice)
  • By pressing the “Power” button on your cabinet
  • Create a shortcut

The first two methods are simple and works on every computer. However, the last two methods are going to make a difference if you are a power user.

How to shutdown or restart your computer with a shortcut ?

Dont want to make you wait for long, so here is the last point first.Now, getting to the restarting part, it is similar to the shutting down part as well and it can be done by:

  • Clicking Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Restart
  • Window Key ->letter u -> letter r
  • Pressing the restart button on the cabinet.

However, instead of this, you can shut down and restart your computer by simply double clicking a shortcut file .

  • On your desktop, make a right click and then select New->Shortcut

    shutdown_1.jpg

  • For “Type the location of the item” type shutdown -r -t 0

    shutdown_shtcut.jpg

  • Click Next, then enter a name, such as Restart PC

    shutdown_shtcut_last.jpg

That’s it. Whenever you double click the shortcut, your PC will automatically restart.

NOTE: If you want your PC to Shut down instead of restart, then all you have to do is change the ”r” to a “s”. i.e., shutdown -s -t 0.

The easier method, would however be to press the restart button on the cabinet but that certainly is not the safest and should only be used during times of emergency (computer not responding and so on).

How to enable shutdown through power button ?

If you are not comfortable with using shortcuts, use power button. Power Button is most of the time a big sized button. The usage is to do a instant shutdown but you need to setup the function for the Power button to perform when pressed. This can be done by the following steps

  • Right click on the desktop.
  • Click on Properties
  • Click on the Screensaver tab
  • Select the Power option at the bottom
  • Click on the Advanced tab
  • In the drop-down menu under the line “When I press the power button on my computer” select Shut down. You can also select other options as per your needs.
  • Click on Apply

By doing this, whenever you press the Power button on your cabinet, the computer shuts down as normally as it would when it is shut down using the default methods. This has come in useful for me in a lot of occasions. During powercuts, the monitor which is not connected to the UPS will not function. So, it would be difficult for me to shut down the system by using the mouse and selecting the menu options. Then, a single press of the Power button would do the job.

This post was contributed by Vijay who blogs about Website and Web Service Reviews at Siteguide Do visit his site for more guidance on websites and services. If you have any questions feel free to ask him. I hope you enjoyed the article

 

About The Author of this article:
Ashish is one of the co-author of this blog and writes on various interesting softwares, PC tips and more. You can read more of his articles here.

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10 Comments and Link-Backs to “How to shutdown and restart pc with a shortcut ?

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10 Comments from Friends and Readers

  • Gili, June 23, 2007:

    This is a very nice trick and the post is well written.

  • Ken Xu, June 24, 2007:

    Oh, Nice trick! I can shutdown even more faster now. This idea seems new to me! Thanks! :D

  • Vijay, June 24, 2007:

    Thank you for your comments Gili and Ken Xu..

  • Vijay, June 24, 2007:

    Thank you for your comments Gili and Ken :D

  • Madhur Kapoor, June 24, 2007:

    Nice post man , i like the shortcut part .

  • Ashok, June 24, 2007:

    Nice trick, but sometime it may cause accidental shutdown.

  • Ken Xu, June 24, 2007:

    You are welcome, Vijay! :)

  • Abhishek, June 24, 2007:

    Hi, your blog seems to be really nice!! Are you interested in exchanging links? My blog is at http://changingtechnology.blogspot.com/ and it’s about the latest gadgets and the technology used. Do let me know if you are interested. I too will put up a link to your blog on mine. Thanks.

  • Vijay, June 24, 2007:

    Ashok, if the icon is clearly labeled “Shutdown”, I am sure there would be rare cases of accidental shutdown. Also, if you feel that you may accidentally click it, you could place the icon in another corner of the desktop, say the right top corner.. So you can clearly distinguish between the other icons and this one and this wont lead to unnecessary clicks either.

    @Madhur: Thank you for your comments!

  • Ashish Mohta, June 24, 2007:

    Good Going guys. Even I liked this post a lot. Good tricks and great set of comments here. :)

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