CyberNotes: Remotely Restart & Shutdown Computers

Tutorial Thursday

We’ve done some articles in the past covering how to remotely restart or shutdown a computer, and since then we’ve come across more utilities that we thought you would love. So we decided to put together a compilation of tools that you can use to shutdown one or several computers remotely.

As we’ve previously shown it is possible to shutdown computers remotely from the command line, but it may not be as convenient as some of the applications out there. The four tools that we’ve listed below are all extraordinary because they are all 100% free, and none of them require any installation. Oh, and they give you the option to browse for computers on the network so that you don’t have to remember their names or IP addresses!

Each of the tools have a unique feature that really sets them apart from the others. So before deciding on which one you want to use I recommend reading through your options.

–Remote Reboot (Homepage)–

This is a very simple solution to remotely restarting a computer. One thing that really sets this apart from the others is that it has the checkbox to forcefully shutdown the remote computer. Sometimes there is an application that just will not end, and by forcing the computer to shutdown you can circumvent any possible problems.

One other thing that makes this special is that you can provide a reason for shutting down the computer, which the Windows Server administrators out there may find useful.

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–Remote Shutdown (Homepage)–

The reason I like Remote Shutdown is that you can type a message to be displayed on the remote computer, and it can include a button to cancel the operation before it occurs. This is useful, for example, in a household where you may try to shutdown all of the computers before you go to bed. If someone was still using the computer they would be able to cancel out of the shutdown process.

–Shutter (Homepage)–

Compared to the others it’s a little different to use Shutter to remotely restart a computer. In the options it has a setting where you can turn on a web interface for shutting down the computer. Then all you have to do is point a web browser to the computer’s IP address and designated port number to go through with turning it off. The web interface will also let you turn the monitor off, mute the volume, and more.

If you think about it this is pretty different from the way the other programs work. You don’t actually have to be running Shutter on the computer your using the shut it down with, instead you just connect via a website. With a little port forwarding on your router this could easily work outside of the local network.

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–PowerOff (Homepage)–

This is not only one of my favorite applications, but it is also one of the few that have always been on my USB drive. The reason why this one is so great is because it has an option to shutdown computers in bulk! You can specify a group of computers according to name or IP address (you can also browse for locally networked computers), and it will execute them all simultaneously. If you’ve got several computers that you want to shutdown this has got to be the option for you!

Note: The “bulk” shutdown feature is only available in the Beta version of PowerOff.

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 This is just one of the hundreds of CyberNotes we have done. You can find more of them by visiting our CyberNotes category, or by subscribing to our CyberNotes feed. We also have a full feed available if you want to receive all of our articles in your reader!

Tags: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Applications, Features

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