Windows has a bunch of commands which you can execute via Command Prompt. Shutdown is one of those commands. Shutdown is a command that you can use to shut down your PC, restart or logout the current session. However, shutdown won’t work unless you use certain parameters.

When you type shutdownon the Command Prompt, your PC won’t shut down. Instead, you will see a list of parameters which you can use on this command. There are tens of parameters offered by this command. In Windows 10, the use of each parameter starts with a slash character (“/”). If you want to use more than one parameters, each parameter should be started with slash character as well.

For instance, if you want to shut down your PC, you can type shutdown /s.

The shutdown command itself can be an alternative to shut down your Windows 10 computer (and other Windows versions) if the Windows start menu suddenly not working. Following are the common use of the shutdown command on Windows 10.

Shut down the PC

To shut down your Windows 1o PC using shutdown command you can use the “s” parameter. This parameter tells Windows to shut down the current session. A pop-up message will appear once you executed the shutdown command with the “s” parameter.

shutdown /s

Abort the shut down

After executing the shutdown command with the “s” parameter, you suddenly remember that there are some works you haven’t saved. Don’t be panic, you can abort it using the “a” parameter.

shutdown /a

Shut down the PC with delay

The shutdown command also has a parameter that allows you to schedule the shut down. This parameter is handy if your Windows 10 PC is used by several users and you want to tell them that the system will be shut down within minutes or hours. To schedule shut down, you can use the “t” parameter followed by the delay interval. The shutdown command itself use the unit of second.

So, if you want to shut down your PC 2 hours from the shutdown execution you can use the value of 7200 (3600 x 2). Or, if you want to shut down your PC 2 minutes from the execution, you can use the value of 120. Here is the example to shut down your PC 2 minutes after shutdown execution.

shutdown /s /t 120

Restart PC

To restart your PC using the shutdown command, you can use the “r” parameter.

shutdown /r

Logout current session

In addition to shut down and restart, you can also use the shutdown command to logout the current session. To do so, you can use the parameter of “i”.

shutdown /i

Hibernate

Hibernate is the process of closing down your computer for without shutting it down. When you hibernate your computer, the system will off but the apps you open won’t be closed. Hibernate is a great option to close your computer when you are taking a lunch break.

To hibernate your Windows PC using shutdown command, you can use the option of “h”.

shutdown /h

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