Shutdown Your Computer or a Remote PC via Command Prompt

Microsoft Windows offers several ways to shut down or restart your computer, one of which is via the command prompt. 

To access the command prompt window from Vista or Windows 7

Go to the Start menu
Type cmd in the Search field
Press Enter


On a Windows XP computer

Click the Start menu
Choose Run
Type cmd
Press Enter

From an open command prompt window, you can type shutdown, and then the option you wish to execute.

To shut down your computer type: shutdown /s

To restart your computer type: shutdown /r

To log off your computer type: shutdown /l

For a complete list of options type: shutdown /?