Shutting your computer down ‘remotely’ can come in handy at times. There are times when you are in a rush and shutting down your system is too much of a hassle.
But before we get to how you can remote control your PC, here are the basics that you need to know first.
- You need to have admin rights on the target computer(s).
- If you are on a home network, make sure all the computers are in same the work group and they all have an admin account with same credentials.
- You must know the target computer’s official name or IP address for the same.
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To use this feature, the Remote Registry service must be enabled on the remote computer. To enable Remote Registry, follow these steps:
- Open Run Window by pressing Windows Key and R together.
- Type services.msc in Run Window and press Enter.
- Microsoft Management Console will start with the Services tab open.
- In the console, right-click on Remote Registry and select Start to start the service.
Before using Command Prompt (CMD), you should know some of the basic commands. Here are some tabled commands that you can learn easily.
| PARAMETER | FUNCTION |
| -s | Shuts down the computer. |
| -r | Reboots the computer. |
| -f | Force-close all running applications. |
| -m \\Computer’s name | Identify a specific computer on the network that you want to shutdown or reboot. |
| /h | Hibernates the computer. |
| /? | Displays the full help document with all commands. |
| -t xx | It will wait a certain amount of time in seconds before shutting down or restarting |
| -c “message” | Add your own text inside the quotations to provide remote users with a message about why and when their PC will shut down or reboot. |
Now that you know the basic commands, you can use CMD to take control of your remote PC and shut it down whenever you want.
- Open Run Window by pressing Windows Key and R together.
- Type CMD to open Command Prompt.
- Type shutdown -m \\computername
This command will shut down the specific computer(s). Do remember that you have to type computer’s official name instead of ‘computername’ in the above command.
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Saving your work before shutting down the computer
Let’s say the computer’s name is ‘worklaptop’ and you have to save your work before shutting down the computer. In that case, use this command:
shutdown -s -f -m \\ worklaptop -t 60 -c “Shutting down the computer. Save work and close apps.”
This command will make the computer with name “worklaptop” begin a 60-second countdown before it shuts down and displays the message “The computer will restart, please save all work.” on the screen.
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So, you can now use commands on Command Prompt and remotely shut down your computer and protect it from data and security breaches.
Want more such tips and tricks. Let us know what would you like to know about in the comments section below.