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“.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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“.
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.
Related posts:
I have been using this tool as a service for 5 years and it is great. My only issue is that with Windows 7 it will shut the computer down but not display the warning. Any ideas there?
You can use tool shutdown.exe. It just needs to be run with parameter -f (forced shutting down) .. so you need to execute ‘shutdown.exe -s -f -m \\computer_name’
Ive been using a freebie program called airytech switch off for my maintenance you can set the program to shut down for you in your absence no need to connect to the web
i do this but not so good the error is come that network path was not found
mas ini power of bisa buat win 7 ga?
guys,
poweroff is a good app, been using it for years to shutdown my PC following scans downloads etc etc overnight. I need a WAN / Internet capable WOL applet, which sadly poweroff is not. Its LAN only.
Ive searched and found loads, but all barring one is LAN only, and that one is a cmd line instruction that i just cant get to work. I’d prefer a GUI type if possible. I know there are a couple of websites out there that yyou can supposedly use but not having a lot of success with them either.
Any of you guys have any tried and trusted suggestions please?
PS to reply, swap the dot in the EM addy for a dot :-)
BEST….PROGRAM….EVER!!!! I can finally turn my server on and off with a nice simple program. Heres the main site for this program;
users.telenet.be/jbosman/poweroff/poweroff.htm
this worked fine on most of my workgroup computers except for one…i reinstalled windows and made other corrrections but nothing worked until i installed a second network card… maybe the driver was bad for the intergrated nic… when i switched over to the added nic the poweroff program worked….
But what if i want turn off PC which si “frozen”/did not answer/?
I had the same problem as you guys but I found a solution.
You have to allow poweroff.exe (from windows/system32 directory) in Windows Firewall manually.
Now it’s working like a charm :)
my problem same as giocicco
connect():connection timed out (10060)
????
connect():connection timed out (10060)
How to Remotely Control Computers Turn off, Fix Volume Control, Starting Time log, Time Off log on Local Area Network
Is there any program out there that can be used on Linux to shutdown a computer? I’m trying to get my PS3 with Linux installed to turn off my Windows PC when I tell it to. Any suggestions?
can anyone have solution to open port # 20 on the remote computer plz guys………………
i found this site on google.at by searching for clues how to shut down computers remotely. interestingly google translates the text into german (very badly, by the way). is this deliberate or an \\\”accident\\\”? i cant make much sense of the bad german translation, yet i guess i will figure out how to use the poweroff tool, so this page still was most helpful :)
is there anyway of shutting down some-ones computer, that is on your network e.g. (school network) by using a totaly internet based program that you dont have to download. My freind keeps shutting down my pc by just using the internet and i dont know how he does it, can anybody help please?
I’m getting a bit frustrated…
I’ve tried to get the shutdown command in cmd to
work for about 5 hours. I’ve changed most of my settings, and I’ve no idea why i son’t work!!!
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptAfter 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 … [...]
[...] can shut down all your computers properly when battery reaches low level. Remember the article “How to remotely turn off computer from LAN or WAN” that I wrote yesterday? We can use Poweroff batch command line to shut down multiple computers. [...]
There is a “ForceGuest” key in the regestry which is set to “1″ (enabled). It means that all the connection coming from “the network” will be authenticated as the Guest User. For WinXP, the ForceGuest setting is enabled by default when in WORKGROUP mode (not domain) and gives access problems for WMI connections and shares access, other DCOM services and RPC services as well.
Refer to : derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin/2003-02/2268.html
for more details.
Change the key in the registry and you *should* be able to use good ‘ol shutdown.exe again.
I did look into this tool once, but deploying it on to 200 computers just wasn’t very practical for me at that time :(
[...] By Raymond on Oct 30, 2007 in Computer 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. Read the Full Article: How to Remotely Turn OFF Computer from LAN or WAN [...]
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAfter 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 … [...]