A trick for super-fast shutdown: Windows turned off at once

Have you ever wanted to perform a super-fast shutdown on your Windows PC? Imagine that you could shutdown Windows just by clicking on a desktop icon, or using a keyboard shortcut. So you could just run the shutdown process, turn off your monitor, and continue with another important task - without having to wait till your PC is completely turned off. Well, that's possible thanks to the Windows shutdown command plus the appropriate shutdown parameters.

Windows Shutdown Command

Windows provides a shutdown command (named shutdown.exe) which could be used to turn off your PC from the Windows command line. Calling this shutdown function with the appropriate parameters will start a super-fast shutdown process that won't be interrupted. The only line of code needed to shutdown Windows is as follows:

shutdown.exe -s -f -t 00

This is the explanation of the shutdown parameters:

• -s starts the Windows shutdown process in order to turn off your PC.
• -f forces exiting any running Windows process, without any warning: no blocked application will interrupt the shutdown process.
• -t 00 specifies that the shutdown process is delayed 0 seconds: Windows will be shutdown immediately.

That will quickly shutdown windows, exiting at once any program. So the shutdown process won't be stopped by any unresponsive application: with these parameters you will override any annoying "finish program not responding" Windows prompts. Just run the shutdown command and leave your PC.

On the other hand, if you still have some unsaved changes on any application, it seems that you will be given one last chance to save your progress, thanks to a "save changes?" Windows prompt. You can start this super fast shutdown process without fearing to lose any application data.

How to create a quick Windows shutdown button

Let's save even more time creating a quick Windows shutdown button. Don't type by hand the whole shutdown.exe command with those parameters: store the shutdown command line in abatch file following these 2 simple steps:

• Open your favourite text editor and paste the Windows shutdown code inside: shutdown.exe -s -f -t 00
• Save this file as a ".bat" file (for example, fast-shutdown.bat)

You have just created a super fast shutdown button: now you can quickly shutdown Windows just by double clicking your shutdown ".bat" file!

A keyboard shortcut to quickly shutdown Windows

Can you imagine an even faster whay to shutdown Windows? Well, there's still a quicker way to start this unstoppable, lightning-fast shutdown process: you could turn off your PC using a keyboard shortcut.

Once you have created a .bat file that contains the shutdown.exe command with the appropriate parameters, associating this file with a keyboard shortcut is very easy:

• Right click your .bat file and create a shortcut
• I always place this shortcut icon on my desktop, so I can quickly shutdown Windows with a double click
• Right click the recently created shortcut icon and select Properties
• Inside the shortcut tab, click on the keyboard shortcut field
• Press the keyboard shortcut that you would like to use to shutdown Windows. (As you don't want to accidentally shutdown Windows, select some complex combination that would be unused by most applications, such as CONTROL + ALT + SHIFT + F12)

And that's it! You have learnt how to perform a super fast Windows shutdown processthrough a keyboard shortcut. Run this command to quickly turn off your PC, leave at once (don't worry about closing running applications, because Windows shutdown will force the exit), and save your valuable time!