How to Shut Down or Restart Windows PC Using CMD

You may be unable to shut down or restart a Windows PC in the normal way. For example, after Windows 10 upgrade, the taskbar disappears and you can't access the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep options. Or the Start menu is not working for you to find the Power button.

In fact, the Power button in the Start menu is not the only way to close a Windows computer. You can also shut down, restart, log off a PC by using CMD commands. You can even remotely shut down a computer that you access over a network. Read on to learn the simple commands to shut down/restart computer on Windows 10/8/7.

Step 1: Activate Command Prompt
To using Windows shutdown/restart commands, you should first run the Command Prompt on your computer. Here is how to do that.

• Click the Start menu;
• Type CMD in the search field;
• Click Command Prompt to open it.

Or you open the Run dialog and enter CMD to open this program.

Step 2: Run Windows Shutdown/Restart Command
On the CMD window, type "shutdown" and hit Enter key. The shutdown command syntaxt will show. You can use different commands to complete different tasks. Here are some examples of shutdown command for Windows PC.

• shutdown /s: Shut down the current computer;
• shutdown /r: Restart the current compute;
• shutdown /l: Log off the current computer;
• shutdown /s /t 0: Shut down the current computer in XX seconds. For example, type shutdown /s /t 3600 to shut down the computer in 1 hour.
• shutdown -r -m \\MachineName -t -01: Shut down a remote computer in one second. You need to replace the MachineName with the specific name of the remote computer. And you can also enter a different close time if you like.

That's it. After a restart via CMD, little glitches may be fixed on your PC.