How to Shutdown your Windows 7 & Vista Computer at a particular time.

Here are a few ways in which you can make your Windows Computer shutdown (or Restart) at a particular time. This can prove to be especially useful at times !

1) First, as was mentioned elsewhere on this site, you can create a shortcut, programmed to shutdown after a particular period of time as follows:
Right click on an empty area on your desktop.
Select New > Shortcut.
In the first box of the Create Shortcut Wizard, type
Shutdown -s -t 3600
Click Next. Name the shortcut : Shutdown, and click Finish.
Then select an appropriate icon for it !
Here 3600 is 3600 sec's or 60 min's or 1 hr. You can change the figure to what you wish. After the specified period of time the Computer will automatically initiate a shutdown without a warning.
2) Alternatively, Open Run and type:
at 21:30 shutdown -s
A black window will pop up and disappear.

A warning dialog box will then appear and your PC will start shutdown. Do note that the timings have to be mentioned in the 24 hr format here.

3) Using the Windows Vista Task Scheduler also offers a way to shutdown your computer at particular times.
Click Start > All Program > Accessories > SystemTools > Task Scheduler.
On the RHS, in the Actions column, click on Create Basic Task.
Give it a name like Shutdown and some add a Description too.
Click Next. Here select the Trigger. Lets say you want it to shutdown just One time, then select that option and click Next. It will ask you for the date and the time. Click Next.
In the Actions section, select Start a program. Click Next.
Here under Program/script, type:
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe
and under Add arguments, type:
/s
Click Next.

You will now be presented with a Summary. Click Finish. Your Vista will now shutdown at the pre configured time.


4) You can also use a bat file for achieving this. To create a .bat file, copy paste the following in a notepad:
@echo off
title Scheduled Shutdown Batch
color A
echo Enter Time To Shutdown (Use 24 hr format, eg 21:35)
set /p stime=
cls
at %stime% ""shutdown -s -t 00"" >nul
echo Your PC Will Auto Shutdown At %stime%
echo Press Any Key To Exit
pause >nul
exit
Then in the Notepad, from the File menu on top LHS, select Save As. Save the file as Shutdown.bat

When you click the Shutdown.bat, a black box will appear, asking you to fill in the time you want the computer to shutdown. Type the time in the 24 hr format, separating the hr from the minutes by a ':' and hit enter. Thats it, your computer will shutdown at the desired time ! If you wish, you can download the ready-to-use .bat file from here.

If you wish to display a message, you can also add
-c "desired message" at the end of the shutdown command.
Like, for example:
shutdown -s -t 60 -c "Enough gaming buddy-Time to sleep"

You can also use this command to schedule your PC's Restart using the following code instead:
shutdown -r -t 60 -c "Restarting Computer" . Thanks Jerin.

5) Finally, the easiest way, is to download this freeware WinOFF. It is an utility designed to schedule the shut down of Windows computers, with several shut down modes and is fully configurable.

Some of its features are: Scheduled shut downs, either at a set time (e.g. 12:30 PM) or after a period of time (e.g. 1 hour and 25 minutes); Perform a shut down when the CPU becomes idle; Several types of shut down (shut down, restart, close session, power off, administrative shut down/restart, suspend, hibernate and lock computer, etc, etc. Worth a checkout ! Similarly, you can also try Windows Reboot Utility.