Automating Shutdown & Startup

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Automating Shutdown & Startup

Automating Shutdown & Startup

By Brandon Watts

Q: I would like to be able to schedule my computer to shut down at a specific time. How do I do this?

A: Some people wish to allow certain tasks to run while they are away from their computer, and this makes a lot of sense. Why be stuck in front of the computer when these things are taking place? Scheduling your computer to shut down is another reasonable goal. If you're going to be away from it for a majority of time during the day/night, you may want to just have it automatically turn off.

A great way to do this is to download a free program called Switch Off. This program runs on all 32-bit versions of Windows, and is incredibly compact, weighing in at only 64K. You can schedule it to make your computer shut down, restart, go into hibernation, etc. The program even has a Web interface, which will allow you to execute these commands remotely from any computer with a Web browser. Switch Off is a very nice tool, and is suited perfectly to this task.