How To Shutdown Or Restart Remote Computer / Windows 10 PC

Learn the step-by-step methods with screenshots and some tools to Shutdown or Restart a Remote Computer / Windows 10 PC:

In this tutorial, we will explore various methods to remotely shut down or restart the Windows PC and servers. This is useful when you are connected to a home network on a LAN system and remotely need to perform the tasks on the workgroup computers.

This is also useful for the commercial purposes of LAN and WAN networks.

Shutdown/Restart Windows PC

Here, we will first emphasize how to enable the remote computer access settings in your Windows PC. Then we will enlist the different methods available in Windows for remote shutdown and restart.

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Also, we will explore different available tools through which we can perform shutdown, restart, force shutdown, monitoring of remote computers, and other operations.

How To Enable Remote Shutdown On Host Computer

For performing the remote shutdown task for the target computer or group of target systems in the home network or the commercial purpose, all the computers must be in the same network workspace and they all should have one common administrative account with the same username and password.

Step 1: First, the user account you are using on both the target and host computer has to be part of the administrator group on the local system. This is ensured by the display information as shown in the below screenshot.

Go to the Control Panel and select the User Accounts and if it is displaying the Administrator or Local Administrator, then you are on the right path.

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Step 2: Follow the path: Control Panel ->Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center option. Now choose the Change Advanced Sharing Settings option from the left menu and then select the options Turn on network discovery and Turn on file and printer sharing. Save the changes as shown in the below screenshot.

Step 3: Go back to the main control panel menu and select the System and Security option. Navigate to Windows Defender Firewall and then select the Allowed apps and ports feature through the firewall, which is present on the left side menu.

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The menu will display various app settings. From them choose the File and Printer Sharing, then check-mark the Home/Work (private only) box. Please do not select the public box option.

Save the change settings and then OK button as shown in the below screenshot.

Step 4: You have left with only one set which comes in the picture if your target computer’s Windows version is different from the remote computer. For example, If you are using Windows 10 and if the target computer is of Windows 7 or Windows Vista configuration, then you will have to make changes in the registry editor of Windows.

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For this go to the start menu and type Regedit. The registry editor will pop up and it will ask to allow making changes. Click on the OK button.

Then navigate to the following keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / MICROSOFT / WINDOWS / CURRENT- VERSION / POLICIES /SYSTEM.

Now, right click on the system menu from the left-side menu bar and select NEW- DWORD (32-bit) Value as shown in the below screenshot.

Step 5: Change the Value name to local account token filter policy and enter. Also, set the Value data to 1 from 0 which is the default. Now press OK and save settings as shown in the below screenshot to come out of the registry editor.

Step 6: To get the names of the computers connected on the network for target shutdown or restart operation, you need to go to Control Panel and select System and Security and then navigate to System. Here you will get the information like computer name, domain name, and workgroup settings as shown in the below screenshot.

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Remote Shutdown Or Restart Using Command Prompt

Step 1: Click on the start menu of your PC and then go to the command prompt.

Step 2: Now enter “shutdown /?” command in the command prompt. All the commands related to shutdown and restart will appear with the switches and details as shown in the below screenshot.

Step 3: To restart the target remote computer from your system, type the below remote shutdown command:

Shutdown /m \\computername /r /f

This command restarts the remote end system of the above name and also forcefully shut down all running programs on the system. The multiple remote computers can also be targeted using this command by specifying all names one by one.

Step 4: To shutdown, the remote computer uses the below command:

Shutdown –m \\computername –s –f –c

This command will shut down the remote end system and force all programs to shutdown. If you set the timer before shutdown then it will show the countdown and display the message: “You are going to signed out in less than a minute”.

Remote Shutdown Using Shutdown Dialog Box

Step 1: Go to the command prompt by clicking on the start menu on your PC.

Step 2: Type the command “ shutdown /i “ in the CMD for the shutdown dialog box as shown in the screenshot below:

Step 3: The remote shutdown dialog box appears as shown in the below screenshot. Select the Add or Browse button to add the computers on the local network you want to shut down or restart remotely.

Step 4: When you click on the Add button then the dialog box appears which asks for the names of the network or computers you want to add. Enter the name in the format “computer name” for example, “Neha” and then click OK.

From the drop-down list of “What do you want these computers to do” choose Shutdown or Restart option. In the below screenshot, we have selected the Shutdown option. Also, select the timer for the display warning, which is here 30 seconds. Click the OK button.

Remote Shutdown By Using Batch File

If we need to run the shutdown command for multiple target computers at one time for a large network then typing the computer name one by one will take a very long time.

The solution for this is to create a batch file for this operation with the timer settings so that it will execute with particular time intervals. For this, go to notepad and type the commands for shutdown operations as shown below:

Shutdown –m \\computerName1 –r

Shutdown –m \\computerName2 –r

Shutdown –m \\computerName3 –r

Shutdown –m \\computerName4 –r

Now save the notepad with the extension .BAT file and save in the all files format with the name restart.bat.

Run this in the command prompt. This will restart all the four computers of the home network at the same time.

Tools To Remote Shutdown Or Restart Windows Computer

#1) ManageEngine Remote Access Plus

With Remote Access Plus, you get HIPAA-compliant remote access software that can help you manage your remote workforce from a single dashboard. You can use the tool to remotely control Windows, Mac, and Linux-powered systems. In just a couple of simple steps, you’ll be able to remotely shut down these systems, put them to sleep, or reboot them. 

You can shut down or reboot the systems individually or in bulk. The platform is also great at detecting issues affecting your devices on the network. It will scan your network peers and accurately diagnose the issue plaguing your devices without any hassle. 

Features:

• HIPAA Compliant remote desktop management
• Remotely manage processes, services, registry, users, files, printers, etc. 
• Assist technicians via video or voice chat. 
• Turn remote computers on in bulk or individually. 
• Get audit-ready real-time reports. 

Price: Subscription starts at $75 per year. A free trial and demo are also available upon request. 

#2) Remote Reboot X

This tool provides remotely shutdown or reboot of the remote hosts with real-time monitoring of the network elements with pinging options. In addition to this, it also retrieves the last reboot time from the remote hosts and a list of services running on them.

Features:

• It can download or install the Windows updates on many remote computers at the same instance of time from a single console port.
• Remotely install the software and batch file upgrades very fast.
• It can start and stop multiple services remotely.
• It can remotely shutdown and reboot the target computer with real-time system monitoring.
• It can also terminate the remote processes.
• It can retrieve the used and free space available in drives of target computers from remote hosts.
• It provides automation flexibility to the programs by executing the customized scripts locally and remotely on the system.

Price: Free

Official URL: Remote Reboot X

#3) EMCO Remote Shutdown Software

This software permits the user to run the remote shutdown, Wake-on-LAN, and other operations on the host computer of the selected network. One can schedule the operations to run manually or automatically.

The program also doesn’t need to install any agent or configuration on the remotely situated target computer.

Features:

• It permits the power management operations in the network for the host system which includes shutdown, wake-up remote PC’s on LAN (turn on and turn off), restart, hibernate and sleep remote PC’s along with the sign-in and sign-out operations.
• The target PC’s can be selected manually or automatically for executing the operations in the network. Thus dynamic target operation facility is also available here.
• It is having an advanced Wake-on-LAN feature through which the program can automatically learn the IP and MAC address of the remote hosts.
• To manage the remote devices, there is no need to install any additional software or alter the configuration. The only need is to have the administrative permission to access the remote PC’s.

Price: Professional edition: $549

Official URL: EMCO remote shutdown Software

#4) Microsoft Power Shell For Remote Shutdown

It is a Microsoft based tool which can be used for performing various tasks related to remote PC operations and management. It can be used to shut down; reboot and force stop the services of the remote computers and servers by installing this software.

a) To shut down the local computer, the command will be:

Stop- computer -computerName localhost

This stop computer parameter will immediately force the system to shutdown.

[image source]

b) To shutdown two remote computers and the local computer the command will be:

Stop-computer –ComputerName “Server01”, “Server02”, “localhost”

The parameter computer name will specify the remote computer name which needs to shut down along with the host computer.

c) Shutdown a remote computer using particular authentication.

Stop-computer –ComputerName “Server01” –WsmanAuthentication Kerberos

This command directs the Kerberos to establish a remote connection with authentication for the remote shutdown.

d) To shut down the computer in a particular domain, follow the commands as shown in the below screenshot:

The get content command will deploy the path parameter to get the location of the target computer and domain name. The credential parameter is used to define the credentials of the administrator of the domain and the value is stored as $c variable.

Now the stop computer will shut down the target computer with the specified name and credentials with force shut down the operations.

e) To restart multiple computers:

It can restart several remote computers by using the restart parameter and specifying the computer names.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

With the help of figures and screenshots, the various methods are explained in this tutorial to remotely shutdown and restart the remote computer. We have also gained knowledge about the settings required in the Windows host computer for allowing access for performing these actions.

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We have explored the different tools available for performing these tasks. Through these tools, we can monitor the performance and other parameters also, along with shutdown and restart operations.

Some frequently asked questions related to this topic are also enlisted to give more clarity on this topic.

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