How To Have More And Better Control on Shutdown Of Windows PC
Hi,
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 entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 1:35 am and is filed under Quality-Free-Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
rajeshmago January 2nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
@MAM: Thanks for commenting and sharing a beautiful idea of controlling the children Internet browsing time through DShutdown. Wishing you and your loved ones a successful 2010!