This article will describe how we can remotely restart, shutdown, log off or even abort a system shutdown in our Local/Network machines using Remote Shutdown Tool (shutdown.exe).

We can use the Remote Shutdown Tool with GUI or from the command prompt but we need to have administrative privileges on those machines.

We can start the GUI of Remote Shutdown Tool by executing:

shutdown.exe /i

If we need to use the command line tool here are the options:

Note: We can use the – switch in case / switch does not work or vice versa

Usage examples:
Restart a network machine and force any running applications to close

shutdown /m \\computername /r /f

Abort a previous shutdown command

shutdown /m \\computername /a

Shutdown a network machine and force any running applications to close

shutdown /m \\computername /s /f

Logoff a machine and force any running applications to close (This cannot be used with /m to specify the target machine)

shutdown computername /l /f

Hibernate a local machine and force any running applications to close

shutdown /m \\computername /h /f

Note: By default the time-out period in previous examples is set to 30 seconds.

Restart a network machine and force any running applications to close giving a reason and set the time-out period to 1 minute (120 sec)

shutdown /m \\computername /r /f /c “Computers will restart in 1 minute, please save any work. System Administrator” /t: 120

Schedule a restart of a machine:

at 23:00 /every:M,T,W,Th,F shutdown /r /m \\computername

In case we want to shutdown/restart multiple network machines through a batch file have a look at the following article:
2009/01/remote-shutdown-windows-network-machines/