MS Windows Vista doesn’t offer much control on its GUI Shutdown feature, i.e., Click on Start and Shutdown and that’s all. No settings for specifying the time and action etc. after which the Shutdown should happen.

I was searching for some tool, free one, that allows more control on Windows Shutdown. Example of two such controls needed by me were:

- Getting An Alert That Windows Vista Is Going To Shutdown.

I know I am getting older and sometimes after I have clicked on Shutdown, I remember that there was something important, like sending an urgent email that was to be done. But I can’t stop the shutdown, though “shutdown -a” (a – for abort) can be used. But one has to be super quick or has to click on a batch file icon (with shutdown -a command in it) to do so. Moreover, Windows closes some processes when doing Shutdown, so if you delay only by few seconds, then you will have to restart your PC as Windows internal programs/services for OS management stops by that time.

Some kind of alert after clicking on Shutdown such as “Are you forgetting to do something important right now Or PC will power OFF, Are you sure you have don’t have any urgent tasks to be done right now?”) will help some of the users (Here I am supposing that you finally clicked on Shutdown and not on Restart etc. instead of Shutdown window).

Second control that was badly needed by me was:

- Autoshutdown Of PC After A Big Download Gets Completed

I leave my PC ON sometimes in night so that it can download some big files that takes few hours to be copied on my PC Or I keep Virus scanner Or Disk Defragmentation running. These tasks take few hours and it’s not possible for one to continuously monitor them again and again manually for their completion.  I know that I have wasted a lot of my electricity in keeping my PC powered ON (though I keep the monitor off) as I didn’t know when these lengthy tasks will be completed and   when the PC should be shutdown.

I also know that most of the download managers support the Auto Shutdown feature but this feature doesn’t work for all the sites, example – Rapidshare.

Now what if an application can do the same, i.e., Give me some kind of alert that PC is shutting down Or Automatically shutdown my PC after those huge files have been downloaded at my computer Or Virus scanning had been completed Or The disk defragmentation is over.

I found a good free application called DShutdown that does above and much more. This application is free and developed by programmer called Dimio and the letter D in DShutdown stands for him, i.e., Dimio.

I am writing about this no cost application after testing the above two functionalities needed by me presently, i.e. – Better control over manual shutdown and auto shutdown after big download completion Or a time consuming task completion.

I also tested the application for majority of its features except the Remote Shutdown and found them working.

One DShutdown feature that I was not able to activate on Windows Vista Business platform was of Enabling the User Inactivity monitoring shown in red in the following screenshot:

The list of the some of the events that can be used for triggering DShutdown (works for Windows 98, NT, XP, 2000 and Vista PC’s) are:
(taken from readme file of the software and explanations added for making it more informative):

- After a set period of time (example 6 hours).

- At a specific hour (example – at 0500 AM).

- At a specific hour of a particular day of the week/month/year (05 AM on 4th week/02/2010)

- When a running program ends (Disk Defragmentation, Virus scanner etc. Here you should know the main exe file running the corresponding program so that it can be selected in DShutdown for enabling Shutdown when the program closes).

- When CPU utilization goes beyond a specified level for a given time (example – below 10 for 1 minute).

- When Internet activity is above or below a specified value for a given time (Example – Net traffic less than 1KB/sec for 1 minute).

- When the modem connection fails, or that of another similar peripheral network card, etc. (Connections defined in DShutdown can be monitored and on connectivity failure, suitable action can be taken,  i.e, PC Shutdown).

- Pixel color change (Monitoring an event based on window closure, appearance of a message or an icon that changes color).

- When another program (or the same user) asks for a shutdown (This is one of the important thing that I was looking for – Windows update doing auto shutdown Or user doing shutdown by clicking on Windows Shutdown button. This feature of DShutdown can be activated by “Enabling shutdown requests monitor”).

Some screenshots showing some of the DShutdown configurations done by me for checking some of its features are shown:

For more details of DShutdown features, kindly refer to its readme file (available after the program download).

DShutdown can be downloaded from:

http://digilander.libero.it/dimio/dshutdown.zip

The webpage of the programmer Dimio, who developed this application for Free is:

http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

DShutdown is a stand-alone program that even doesn’t require installation as it gets loaded in the memory after the program has been clicked. After downloading it, you need to decompress the files. After decompression, it makes a folder named – DShutdown and in DShutdown folder, you can read the readme file – DShutdown (ENG) to know in detail about what DShutdown can do to offer you more control on Windows Shutdown triggering events.

If you download this application and found it useful, then kindly donate some money to Dimio who is kind enough to share it for Free. Any amount of money – small or big is appreciated by him and would help him in developing more quality applications similar to this one.

To donate, go to bottom of the web page located at -

http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

and then click at the paypal button located below the photo Dimio and Dimio’s cat. You can make the payment by credit card in case you don’t have a paypal account.

I am sure that you will find Dimio’s DShutdown, a nice program for your Windows PC as it will help you to have more control on when to start Windows Shutdown. This will ensure better productivity, time and money saving too! Right?

Let me know your comments about this post!

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This tip is about an absolutely Free Download and Upload Software Manager.

A small intro to begin with.

Downloading and uploading files from/to Internet can be very tiring and boring if done manually. Thanks to FDM (Free Download Manager), free software (freeware) that automates and makes the entire process of online file transfers very easy.

FDM helps you in managing & scheduling your file transfers. Once installed, it can auto-detect the start of downloads, record details of download locations, store login information (username and password of sites if selected). Some more useful features of this freeware include resuming of broken downloads, scheduling at off peak intervals and much more. It can also shutdown your PC after a big unattended download has been completed. It can speed up downloads by optimizing the connection and by splitting the files. Free Download Manager can be downloaded for free at –

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm

The given below screen shots shows the FDM downloads and uploads windows pictures (taken from their website). Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Hope that this free software helps you in managing and automating your downloads and uploads and finally saving lot of your precious time. A simple scenario where this SW can be useful is the case where you wanna download a big file from a server that has the broken download resume capability over your unstable or slow internet connection. Since, FDM can track the downloaded part of the file, it can easily resume from where the download has to be started whenever you start FDM next..

You can also download multiple files by just downloading the main folder, the files or folders within the root folder will all be automatically downloaded by FDM. Quite useful compared to doing all of this manually!

Rajesh

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FDM – A Good, Free Software to Manage your Online Downloads and Uploads

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