It may happen that you have to leave the PC for a long period of time but you don't want to interrupt the activity that the machine is carrying out, because you are certain that it will end during our absence. In this case (as in many others) it can be very useful to "instruct" the PC to turn it off or restart it at a specific time, so as to reduce electricity consumption or restart the machines that need to be restarted due to updates.
In this guide I will show you all the methods you can apply to program the shutdown of a PC with Windows at a specific time, using both the tools made available by the operating system and a program designed to facilitate the task for less experienced users.
It's up to us to choose the method that we believe is most effective and practical!
READ ALSO -> All the ways to shut down Windows
How to program the shutdown or restart of the PC from the system
The most practical and fastest way to turn off or restart the PC at a specific time is by using the commands available through the Run menu, integrated in all versions of Windows still supported by Microsoft.
We then open our Start menu and search inside Run .
A small window will open where you can type any command or app name to run.
In our case we will have to use the commands listed below to be able to turn off or restart the PC:
shutdown -s -t xxxx
shutdown -r -t xxxx
The first command is to shutdown the PC, the second to restart; in addition to the X you will have to enter the time (in seconds) with which to execute the specific command.
Using 0 the command will be executed immediately, setting 3600 the PC will turn off after one hour from the launch of the command; obviously just convert the hours into seconds to obtain the numerical value with which to set the time necessary before executing the command.
Once the command has been entered, simply click Enter on the keyboard or click OK to start the command.
A good hours-seconds converter can be tried directly on Google by typing " hours-seconds converter " in the search bar or by using the link here -> Google time converter .
The same commands seen above can also be used from the command prompt (on any version of the operating system) or on PowerShell (on Windows 10).
To launch the command from a command prompt, simply search for Command Prompt from the Start menu and insert the command inside the window as previously seen.
Alternatively we can use the new command shell integrated in Windows 10, that is Windows PowerShell ; look for it in the Start menu, start it and enter the necessary commands as already shown at the beginning of the guide.
The result is the same whatever the method we intend to use.
How to schedule a shutdown or restart of your PC from Scheduler
With the method we saw earlier, we will be able to program the shutdown only for a certain period of time from the launch of the program (2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours etc.), but we cannot set a precise time for the shutdown, perhaps with the possibility of repeating the command at regular intervals (every week or every day for example).
To do this we will have to rely on the scheduler, integrated in all versions still supported by Windows.
We open the Start menu on our Microsoft operating system and search for Scheduler.
A new window will open with all the scheduled activities already present on the PC; for our purposes we have to create a basic activity by clicking on the item at the top right Create basic activity .
A new window will now open, where we will have to configure every aspect of the schedule.
In the first screen we give a name to the activity and a possible description of the activity (optional), then we click Next .
In the second screen we will already have the opportunity to choose the programming of the activity we are creating, thus choosing whether to carry out the activity every day, every week, every month or upon reaching particular conditions.
Based on the item we choose, the choice of time, day or month to plan will be unlocked in the following screen.
We always click on Next to get to the most important screen, where we will have to configure a part of the command as seen previously by clicking on Start program .
In the next screen we click on the Browse item and go to the path C / Windows / System32, where we will select the executable called shutdown .
To simplify, we can also directly insert C: \ Windows \ System32 \ shutdown.exe, provided that Windows is installed on the right disk or partition.
Once we find the right executable we add the desired topic in the Add topics field; the choice is different based on the result we want to obtain: if we want to turn off the PC we will have to use the -s argument, as shown in the image below.
If instead we want to restart we will have to use the -r argument, as visible in the image we have inserted below.
Once this aspect has also been configured, we just have to click on Next and check the final summary window with all the details of the scheduled activity; to make it effective, just click Finish .
How to program the shutdown or restart of the PC via software
If we are unable to use the prompt or method with the scheduler we can get help from the free program Wise Auto Shutdown, available for free download from here -> Wise Auto Shutdown .
With this simple to install program and with a clear interface translated into Italian, we will be able to plan the shutdown and restart (but also the hibernation, suspension and disconnection of the user) with specified date and time, setting a specific period of time, by scheduling a daily activity or by scheduling the shutdown after a certain period of inactivity from the PC (for example 4 or 5 hours).
By setting all the buttons in the right place, simply click Activate to make the schedule operational; activating the item Warn 5 minutes before carrying out the process, we will also be notified by a warning window of the approaching time or period set for the activity, so as to allow us time to close everything if we were still present in front of the PC .
READ ALSO: Suspend and turn on a computer at a set time
