After I posted an article on how to remotely turn on computer from LAN or WAN, I’ve been getting comments and emails asking me how to remotely turn off computer in a LAN or WAN.

Actually Windows XP has a built-in shutdown Windows Remote Shutdown Tool (shutdown.exe) located at Windows\System32 directory. If you run the command shutdown, it shows you that there’s a -m command to remotely shutdown/restart/abort a computer. I tried running the command from my laptop “shutdown -s -m \\pc” to shutdown my desktop and I only get the message “Access is denied“.
Remote Shutdown Access is Denied
Why do I get the access is denied error? To think about it logically, there should be some kind of authentication to remotely shutdown a computer but the shutdown tool didn’t list out any arguments for me to input any username or password.

The best way is NOT to use windows built-in Remote Shutdown Tool. Let’s not crack our heads on this problem when there is a much better tool to do it.

I’ve tested a few program that can remotely shutdown computer and I personally found that Poweroff is the best out there.
How to remotely shutdown computer through internet
Poweroff is a small program for Win95/98/NT/W2K/XP to schedule a shutdown, reboot, logoff, poweroff, Standby, Hibernate, Lock, Wake-On-LAN at a certain time. Poweroff also supports command line options that allows poweroff to be used in batch scripts. It has a built-in scheduler, it allows you to run a program before doing the action, you can give a warning message to the user, wait for a process to finish before doing the action and full remote control is supported.

You can use it to control the power state of your computer and also a remote computer. To perform any actions on your local computer, just make sure “Local Computer” is selected and then select the action that you want. You can have that action being performed immediately or schedule the action at a certain moment in time.

Steps to remotely shut down a computer using Poweroff:

On the REMOTE computer that you want to shutdown.
1. Download Poweroff, extract the ZIP archive and run poweroff.exe
2. Select Service from menu bar and click “Create service“. You should get a message saying “Poweroff service successfully installed“. poweroff.exe will be automatically copied to your Windows\system32 folder and runs whenever the computer is booted up.
Turn off computer through Internet
3. Check “Allow remote control” and click Settings button.
4. You can specify the port number where poweroff listens for connections or you can use the default 3210. Enter a password. The password is encrypted and stored in registry.
Specify poweroff port and password
5. On menu bar, click Service and select Save settings to service.

On your LOCAL computer where you want to send the command to remotely shutdown a computer.
1. Download Poweroff, extract the ZIP archive and run poweroff.exe
2. Select “Remote Computer” and click the “Specify” button.
3. You can enter either computer name, IP address, or even hostname (No-IP). Enter password and the port number that you set for the remote computer. Click OK.
Poweroff Remote Computer settings
4. Select the action that you want to perform and click Do it button.

That’s all. If you’re able to successfully remotely turn off a computer but wasn’t able to the next time, you can go to Services to check if the poweroff service is running or not. Go to Start -> Run and type services.msc. Look for Poweroff and make sure the Status is “Started” and Startup Type is “Automatic“.
Poweroff Services Turn On
Next thing to check is the saved settings. Make sure you did not miss the part where you have to “Save settings to service”.

If you want to turn off a remote computer through the Internet, you need to forward the port 3210 or the port that you specified on your router to the computer that you want to shutdown.

To uninstall Poweroff, click Service on the menu bar and select “Remove service“. Poweroff will not automatically started when you boot up your computer. You can also delete poweroff.exe from Windows\System32 folder.

Note: Using the action “Shutdown” won’t actually shut down your computer. In NT/2000/XP this action will display the standard message “It is safe to shutdown you computer“. If you want to turn off the power of a computer, you should use the “Poweroff” action instead of Shutdown action.

[ Download PowerOff ]

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