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  • How To Create Shutdown and Restart Buttons on your desktop

    May 21st, 2008 · 6 Comments

    Windows XP Logo

    Want to be able to click a button on your desktop to shutdown your computer instead of having to click “Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off” every single time? All you have to do is create a shortcut on your desktop that points to shutdown.exe with the right switches. When you have finished it could look something like this…

    Shutdwon and restart button son desktop. or Restart and shutdown buttons

    Creating a Shutdown button:

    Right click the desktop and select new -> shortcut and the Create Shortcut wizard will appear. Click the browse button and browse to C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe and click OK…

    Now add “-s -t 0″ (without quotes, zero not the letter o, and  spaces between -s & -t & 0) to the end of the text in the location box as shown below…



    Now click next and finish. You will now have a functioning but ugly shutdown button on your desktop…

    Ugly restart button

    To make it look nicer rename the shortcut then right click, select properties, and select Change Icon to select a better icon.

    Create a Restart button:

    It might seem a little strange but Windows XP restarts using the same shutdown.exe file. To create a restart button follow the same steps above but use a -r switch instead of a -s switch…

    After creating both shortcuts, renaming them and changing the icons, you should have something like this…

    Shutdwon and restart button son desktop. or Restart and shutdown buttons

    Shutdown.exe switches: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317371

    Tags: tutorial · windows

    6 responses so far ↓

    • 1 ViniMan // May 24, 2008 at 4:39 am

      On that MS support website stands a description of “msg”. For making a message appear while logging out, do you know how to do that? And how to create a Stand-By shortcut button?

    • 2 blogbookmark.com // May 26, 2008 at 1:49 am

      How To Create Shutdown and Restart Buttons on your desktop…

      Want to be able to click a button on your desktop to shutdown your computer instead of having to click Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off every single time? All you have to do is create a shortcut on your desktop that points to shutdown.exe…

    • 3 Blogsvine // May 26, 2008 at 1:54 am

      How To Create Shutdown and Restart Buttons on your desktop…

      Want to be able to click a button on your desktop to shutdown your computer instead of having to click Start -> Turn Off Computer -> Turn Off every single time? All you have to do is create a shortcut on your desktop that points to shutdown.exe…

    • 4 jason // May 26, 2008 at 4:10 pm

      Saw your post on LinkMarker and I must say this is the something I’ve never thought of, am gonna give this a try. :)

    • 5 rsfeller // Aug 22, 2008 at 2:47 pm

      because it’s so hard to hit the start button!?!?!

    • 6 brett // Aug 31, 2008 at 3:00 pm

      Hi ViniMan thanks for commenting. To show a comment while shutting down or restarting, add a “-c” switch like this…

      %windir%\system32\shutdown.exe -s -c “goodbye cruel world!” -t 5

      Notice I have changed the -t value from 0 to 5. This will cause shutdown.exe to wait 5 seconds before executing, otherwise you won’t have time to read the message.

      To put the system into standby you need to use rundll32.exe so the shortcut target would be…

      C:\WINDOWS\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Standby

      Which only leaves logoff and hibernate so I will list them here too…

      Logoff:
      C:\WINDOWS\System32\shutdown.exe -l

      Hibernate:
      C:\WINDOWS\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Hibernate

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