How to Automate Turning Off Your Computer

winoff

Leaving your computer on overnight is usually the easiest option when you need the computer to perform a task that takes quite a long time to complete (e.g. Downloading large files, ripping DVDs, etc.)

It is however, neither energy efficient nor an environmentally friendly option to take.

WinOff is an excellent piece of freeware which very simply shuts down your computer after a defined time so you don’t need to wait till the morning to attend to your PC.

3 things I like most about WinOff

  1. It’s flexible.  You don’t HAVE to shut it down.  You can also schedule it to - restart, log off, suspend, hibernate or just lock the computer.
  2. You get to see the last thing that happened before shutdown.  There’s an option for capture a screenshot of the desktop right before the shutdown.  With this, you can see if everything turned out OK before the PC shut itself down
  3. It’s free.  Need I say more?

In what other ways do you automate windows tasks?  Tell us in the comments!

[tags] freeware, windows [/tags]

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    • 10 Responses to 'How to Automate Turning Off Your Computer'

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    1. Gaurav jain said,

      on January 9th, 2008 at 1:16 am

      very useful software!!

    2. A.Faith said,

      on January 9th, 2008 at 6:52 am

      you might also wanna take a look at this : http://download.chip.eu/en/Chrono-Shutdown-1.12_1176159.html

    3. Steve Yu said,

      on January 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

      thanks for the post, very useful to me. hehe…. with this software, I can automate my laptop to shut down at late night.

    4. davidlian said,

      on January 9th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

      Hey FB,

      :) Hope you had a happy new year? I love this piece of software! Thanks for recommending it.

    5. Bobbi said,

      on January 9th, 2008 at 11:12 pm

      Does it work with Vista? I’m afraid to download anything since I’ve had so many problems with IE About.blank appearing.

    6. James Yeang said,

      on January 9th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

      @Steven Yu & Gaurav Jain: Glad it helped :)
      @A.Faith : Thanks for the tip!
      @David: yeah - goody year ahead I hope!
      @Bobbi: Documentation doesn’t mention anything on Vista - but I guess you can try, then uninstall if it doesn’t work?

    7. Paul Hamilton said,

      on January 10th, 2008 at 4:48 am

      Hi James. I’m glad you left a comment on my blog because that led me to yours. You share some helpful resources here! –Paul

    8. Syahid A. said,

      on January 11th, 2008 at 1:07 am

      Love the part that it can show screenshots before the action takes off. My previous auto shutdown app can’t do this.

    9. lucky v said,

      on January 11th, 2008 at 4:46 am

      Try this bit of code for your Run line:
      C:\WINDOWS\\system32\\shutdown.exe -r -t [number of seconds].

    10. James Yeang said,

      on January 11th, 2008 at 7:26 am

      @Syahid: That’s my fave feature too :)
      @lucky V: Thanks for that alternate workaround!

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