Some basics of Command Prompt: shutting down PC

What is Command Prompt?
Command prompt  is a command line interpreter (just like MS DOS) found in Windows NT, XP ,Vista and windows 7.
it's hard to believe but it is basically invented for IBM OS/2


How it can be Useful?


By becoming an expert in Commands ,you can impress your friends, Teachers, Relatives, etc. apart from these you can achieve perfection in making batch files, small setups, programs etc.

How to open Command Prompt?
Click on start> All programs>Accesories> Command prompt in XP ,
and in windows 7 you can just click start and search Command or CMD
Alternatively ,you can click start>run >CMD.exe in all Windows NT based Windows

Shutting down your pc from  command prompt


Type this syntax to
shutdown your PC:  shutdown -s

Restart your PC : shutdown -r
Log off your PC : shutdown -l
To set Timer to shutdown,restart or log off : shutdown -t XX
where XX is time in seconds

For example,
If you want to shutdown your PC in 30 seconds, use this syntax
shutdown -s -t 30
and for restart : shutdown -r -t 30

you can also add message to this shutdown: by adding ' -c "message " ' to your syntax.
and if you want to force the process of restart,log off, or shutdown add this: -f

Now full syntax can be,
shutdown -s -f -t 30 -c "your computer is being shutdown in 30 seconds"

you should see picture like this

To abort this process simply write this in command prompt:
shutdown -a


Hope you'll enjoy this.

Where can this type of shutdown is useful?
It is useful :



  • when you  let your friends ,relatives or child to use your PC ,but for only 30 min.

  • when your pc is having problem with simple shutdown.

  • to make your shutdown process fast
    to do so type: shutdown -s -f -t 0

  • to impress your friends,

Hope you'd enjoyed this.