Who cares, right? They are computers, after all, and it’s our right to leave them running. While true, it is good for a computer to get a break once in a while. While most computers can stay on for weeks on end without significant damage, it is best to turn most computers off completely each and every day when not in use for an extended period.
While it may not hurt much to shut computers down at the end of the day, many people are annoyed to have to boot them back up in the morning. The two minutes it takes for a Windows machine is just too long, and some users leave their computers on all night to avoid the “lengthy” process of booting.

But what if your computer could shut itself off after it knows you have gone to bed and then wake itself back up again? Such a situation would be downright ideal – you wouldn’t have to remember to shut it down before leaving it for the day, and you wouldn’t have to wait for it to start back up in the morning. What’s not to love?

This how-to will remind users how to program their computers to shut themselves down after day’s end and will introduce, to users with a modern enough BIOS, a way to have it start up on its own.
GHacks.net actually shared with you an automatic shutdown program called Smart Shutdown a few years back. While a solid option, some people have had problems getting it to work on Windows 7 machines. Luckily, another option called Switch Off provides the same features with support for Windows 7. The program can be downloaded here.

Follow the steps of the automatic installer, and when finished a new icon should be sitting on your taskbar. Clicking on it brings up a handy interface that allows you to choose how often you would like your machine to take itself down. Make your selections before clicking Enable Task.

Getting your machine to boot back up on its own is a little more hit and miss, but most recent machines should have you covered. Unfortunately software cannot be used to bring your computer up from a shutdown – that would defeat the purpose of a shutdown. But if you enter your BIOS options as your computer is just beginning to boot, you may find a series of options under Power Management Options or something to that effect.

Take a look there for an alarm feature which will automatically turn your computer back on. It may be labeled as Resume by RTC or RTC Alarm. Program it to come up an hour or so before you use it each day, and like magic, your login screen will await with your computer feeling rejuvenated after a long night’s sleep.

That may be going too far, but giving your computer a rest really is good for its components. You aren’t using it anyway, so why not let it go down for the night?

The Windows 7 start menu on the other hand displays one default power down option, and the remaining options in a menu next to it. Shutdown is the selected default action, while reboot, lock or sleep mode are available as menu items.

Some Windows users may prefer to change the default actions of both the power button on the PC case, as well as the power down button in the start menu. Here is how this is done.

Change Start Menu Power Button

Right-click on the start orb in the Windows taskbar and select Properties from the menu. You will find configuration options for the start menu in the window that options. among the options is a Power Button Action pull down menu. Just select the desired power button action from the menu and then OK to apply the change to the system.

You can for instance select lock or sleep if you use those modes regularly, and shutdown less regularly.

Click on the start menu orb again after you have made the change, you should see the new action on the shutdown button.

Changing the PC Case Power Button Action

Many Windows users do not know that they can change the action of their PC case power button as well. This configuration option is available in the control panel. Click the start menu orb and select Control Panel from the options afterwards. Click on the System and Security applet, and there on “Change what the power buttons do” under Power Options.

The default action is to shut down the computer. This can be changed to sleep, or do nothing in the pull down menu on the configuration screen. Some users may see different options in the menu, depending on their setup.

It is furthermore possible to define if a password needs to be entered on wakeup. If you do not want to enter your account password again, select Don’t require a password.

Click the save changes button in the end to apply the changes.

And that’s how you change the functionality of the power button on your PC case, and the power button of the start menu. Have something to add? Let me know in the comments.

The program can initiate local and remote shutdowns and other actions. It comes as a portable version and installer for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. There is only one difference between the installer and the portable version: the remote options are only available in the installer.

Airytec Switch Off displays a system tray icon upon startup that serves to purposes. It can for one be used to perform specific actions like shutting down the PC, enabling sleep mode, hibernation or shutting down a vpn connection right away or in the near future or to schedule specific events.

Available immediate actions can be started right away, after 30, 60 or 120 minutes or after 30, 60 or 120 minutes of cpu inactivity. An option to select the same for network inactivity would be a nice addition as it is currently not available.

The second option is the scheduler which can be displayed with a left-click on the program icon.

The scheduler can be used to configure events that happen once, daily, weekly, per countdown or cpu idle. The available actions that are performed are the same that are available in the right-click menu:

Shutdown
Restart
Log-Off
Lock
Sleep
Hibernate
Disconnect VPN

The web interface can be configured in the program’s options. This web interface will run on the local computer system on port 8000 by default. It can – and should – be protected with a username and password to avoid unauthorized access.

Airytec Switch Off is a lightweight software program for most Windows operating systems. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

You can start the Event Viewer in Windows using the keyboard shortcut [Windows R], typing [eventvwr.msc] and hitting [enter]. Navigate in the Event Manager using the menu on the left side using the following path: Applications and Services Logs => Microsoft => Windows => Diagnostics-Performance => Operational. This will lead directly to the location that contains performance diagnostics not only for the Windows shutdown but also for standby and boot performance issues.

A good way to start is to sort the columns by Task Category. Click on the Task Category title and look for Shutdown Performance Monitoring entries. Each entry will contain information about the application or process that was causing problems during shutdown including the time it took to shutdown that process. A process that takes very long to shutdown is usually the problem for the shutdown problems.

Once the process or application has been identified it is a matter of finding out why it is causing the delay. It could be outdated or incompatible with that version of Windows and to a lesser extent a faulty version or driver. A good way to start is to look for updates for that software and install those if they are available. It might be easier on the other hand to simply deactivate or uninstall the software if that is possible.

Smart Shutdown does not look like much after installation and users judging its tiny interface might be disappointed at first glance. This disappointed will surely change to sheer joy after finding out that it offers functionality that would put many applications to shame.

The basic functionality is to perform an action after a certain time of inactivity on the user’s part. The default setting is to turn off the computer after 30 minutes of inactivity. The interval and the action can be changed in the same menu. Instead of turning off the computer the user could be logged off, the Internet connection be disconnected or a message reminder send.

Then there is the option to perform an action at a specific time or after some time has passed independently from the activity level of the computer. This provides even more options like shutting down network computers.

The list of network computers that will be automatically shutdown can be configured in the options. The administrator can define a message that will be displayed on the network computer and the time that the message will be displayed. Network computers can be shutdown or rebooted this way. Lists of computers can be saved and loaded at a later time which is excellent for remote shutdowns.

And then there are the global options. The user can select to shutdown the system fast, empty the recycle bin, force the system to close all open tasks, configure settings for each user individually and confgiure left and right-click shortcuts that perform certain actions.

Smart Shutdown can be configured to be run from the command line which would make it possible to create a shortcut for an automatic shutdown of Windows.

The actions that can be assigned are manifold as well. Users can choose to shutdown, reboot, hibernate, log off, lock / switch the user, turn on the screensaver, turn off the monitor, put the PC in sleep mode or shut down the Internet connection. That’s a lot of options to choose from already but there is more to it if you check the options of the program.

Another program can be executed before the selected action takes place. It seems that only executable files can be selected though.

Other options include emptying the recycle bin or hiding the shutdown and log off buttons in the start menu as well as the task manager. There is also another option to create shortcuts for all the actions, e.g. to shutdown the computer.

What about shutting down a computer when a pixel changes its color, if the user is inactive for a certain amount of time, shutting down when a shutdown request has been intercepted, if a upload, download speed is reached or a process is using more or less than a specified amount of CPU usage.

You might have asked yourself why a shutdown program would intercept a shutdown request. It’s pretty easy to explain, DShutdown allows to configure customized shutdowns. It is for instance possible to execute a program, backup or temp file clearer for instance, before shutting down. Users can define the type of shutdown, do you want to go into hibernation, power off, log off for instance or write a log file.

It is furthermore possible to remotely shutdown computers, this means that you can shutdown more than one computer if one of them receives a shutdown command. Awesome software, 200 Kilobyte, no installation needed.

The shutdown is almost immediate which means it is much faster than the shutdown with the usual registry tweaks that can be applied to reduce the timeout delay for processes. The freeware runs fine on Windows Vista and XP, you should just be aware that Superfast Shutdown ignores everything that is still open and running. This could mean that you loose data that has not been saved. Make sure you save everything important before you activate the shutdown option.

Installing the freeware adds two shortcuts to your desktop. The first is called superfast shutdown and the second superfast reboot. Both options are great if you think that the normal shutdown and reboot procedure takes to long. Again, make sure that everything important is saved before you click on the shortcuts.

This can happen when third party, or even Microsoft applications have not properly cleaned up when exiting. Windows will keep trying to unload the profile until Windows finally decides that it can’t and should shutdown. Even if you find the application causing the problem – it may be impossible to do anything about it.

Microsoft released the tool profile hive cleanup because of this. When you install the tool you will find a new service which is called profile hive cleanup service. This service automatically cleans up user profiles when it is running and this should have the result that the shutdown of the system does not take minutes but seconds.

The idea of this program is to reclaim resources when a task is finished (memory, handles, etc). It accomplishes this by monitoring for users to log off and verifying that unused resources are reclaimed. This approach is superior as it works for any known reason that profiles do not unload and also will keep working to address new unknown issues.