Free auto shutdown for Windows Vista?

Question

Is there any tool (free and virus free) that does an auto shutdown (force) for Windows Vista?

I'm looking to play some songs while I go to sleep and after some time will need the system to shut down automatically.

Answer 1

Sweet Dreams is a tiny shut down timer for your computer. All you need to do is select the duration between 5 and 120 minutes, and the action to be performed: shut down, switch off monitor, standby mode when the time is up. During this time the volume level is being reduced down to a selected level... "Sweet dreams!"

Sweet Dreams is freeware and portable. (using the actual version 1.21 in Windows Vista/7 requires "compatibility mode for XP")

Strange, version 1.1 works fine without compatibility mode in Windows 7, probably because it doesn't feature hibernate/standby, just shut down (which suits me fine).

Here's a direct download link for Sweet Dreams v 1.1.

Answer 2

We can write a batch file that performs forced shutdown. For example, to shutdown the computer after 1 hour:

shutdown /s /t 3600

Vista & XP allows time before shutdown to be specified upto 10 minutes whereas Windows 7 supports shutdown time to be maximum of 10 years.

Either /t option or Windows Task scheduler could be used to schedule the trigger of above batch file. But tough part is that scheduling needs to be done manually (not an issue if the machine shutdown time is fixed).

Answer 3

Sweet Dreams definitely seems like a useful program. However, I don't see how the "Power Options" in the control panel would accomplish this simple task?

You can tell Windows to go to "sleep" after a period of time, which draws a little more power than if it was off, but way less than if it is on. Or you can even set hibernation time.

Answer 4

Simply, Windows has Task Scheduler. You can schedule a task at the time you want to shutdown your computer.

Answer 5

'===============================================================================
'Launches "shutdown.exe /s /t xxx" - This script is a workaround...
'... for the 600 seconds time-out limit in Vista.
'Created on March 30, 2007
'Copyright © 2007 Ramesh Srinivasan.
'Winhelponline.com - http://www.winhelponline.com

Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
strMsg = "Enter the shutdown timeout period (in Seconds) Default 600; 60m=3600s;90m=5400s; 120m=7200s; 3h=10800s; 4h=14400"
iSec = trim(InputBox (strMsg,"Shutdown timeout value ",5400))
if iSec = "" then wscript.quit
if iSec > 600 then
     iSleep = int(iSec) - 600
     iSleep = iSleep * 1000
     WScript.Sleep iSleep
     objShell.Run "shutdown.exe /r /t 600"
else
     objShell.Run "shutdown.exe /r /t " & iSec
end If
'===============================================================================

NOTE: copy and paste the above code and save as TURNOFF.VBS
Run this script to schedule a computer shutdown. You can also hardcode an iSec value of your own, in seconds.