How-to: Remotely shutdown computer Using Command Prompt

 

'Shutdown' in computer language is like going to bed and sleep. Computer needs to rest like human beings. When we say remotely shutdown a computer, it simply means to turn off other computers or laptops that are connected via LAN using your computer. Let say, you have 2 computers in your home, 1 is located in the ground floor and the other one is in your bedroom which is in the second floor.

Think of scenario that you are in your bedroom using your computer for about 8 hours and you feel like you want to go to bed and sleep but you still need to go down to shutdown your other computer in the ground floor. One solution is to know this simple trick. But remember that this will only work if you are connected via Local Area Network using Switch or Router Switch to your remote computers.

Here's the flow to follow..

This method below requires you to have an administrator account on the computer that you will perform the shutdown or else you will encounter an error "Access is Denied".

This method will require you to have either the IP address or machine name of the computer or computers you want to shutdown remotely.

All of the methods below were created using Windows XP. Vista offers the same commands and a few extras, while Windows 2000 has similar commands. If you use 2000, change the “-“ to a “/”.

Microsoft has included a tool that comes with Windows that will be the focus of most of this article. I always like to use inbuilt utilities when they are available. In this case the command is “shutdown”.

If you open up a command prompt (Start > Run > Cmd) and type “shutdown” without "", you will see that there are a bundle of arguments you can use with the shutdown command. The -m argument followed by the machine name, and a -r(restart trigger) will shutdown your computer. The best way for me to explain it is through examples.

In the command prompt, try the following:

shutdown -m \\computername -s ---(Using Computer Name)

or

shutdown -m \\192.168.5.100 -s ---(Using IP Address)

Note: Dont follow the IP Address in the example it might vary. On how to know the IP Address of computer read on this post: Knowing IP address of Computer
Lets break it down:

The shutdown command gets the ball rolling

-m \\computername should be the name of the computer you want to shutdown.
-s tells the remote computer to Shutdown.

There are a number of other arguments you can use.

-r tells the remote computer to Restart
-l tells the remote computer to logoff

So now, you can try it! Good Luck!!