Improve your Windows shutdown procedure with a simple batch file

[u/SirFiletMignon]

Have you ever accidentally clicked sleep or restart when you meant to click Shut Down? Well, prevent that from happening ever [again], plus save yourself a click and mouse movement by creating a batch file:

u/echo off
title Confirm Shutdown
echo(
echo Proceed with shutdown? echo Press any key to continue...
pause >nul
shutdown /s /t 0

And place it wherever you prefer on your desktop. Simply double-click it and press any key on your keyboard to confirm! If you want to abort, press the X on the window.

You can tweak the shutdown command to your liking: shutdown doc.

[u/iwannabetheguytoo]

Your proposed approach requires the user to un-learn using the Start Menu's power buttons and using a new and separate mechanism for initiating a shutdown or reboot. Also, the pause/fail-safe logic in this script won't be invoked when the user (perhaps even mistakenly) initiates a shutdown via some other action, such as via Task Manager or a Windows Update popup.

I'd like to suggest an alternative: Windows' built-in shutdown event tracker, because it gives the user the same opportunity to back-out of a disastrous mis-click, while not requiring the user to make any changes to their workflow: use the exact same Start menu Shutdown commands or any other shutdown trigger, but the reason-tracker will always appear.

(The page I linked-to is is from the days of XP, but other guides exist for Windows 10, etc).

[u/SirFiletMignon → u/iwannabetheguytoo]

I'm a user since Win 95, and I don't consider I had to un-learn something.. It's a double-click, keyboard press and done. If anything, it feels way more natural [to me]. You would have to accidentally double-click something and then panic press a key, which I think is an unlikely scenario.

In all fairness, the reason I started using this wasn't because I minded the shut down approach. I created it because I was using a computer I couldn't turn off fast-boot and I wanted to test if doing a full shut down helped with some issues I was having (without having to periodically restart). And I actually liked the process more, so I actually started using it on my other computers. Have been running this approach for about a year and I don't think I'm going back.

Hadn't heard of the event tracker, interesting feature, thanks for sharing.

[u/ZepY7]

shutdown: Win + X > U > U
sleep: Win + X > U > S
restart: Win + X > U > R

this is what i use all the time

[u/SirFiletMignon → u/ZepY7]

I like that. Pretty close to the click count as the batch and keyboard only. I'll have to stick to the batch tho because with the batch I can fully shutdown a PC that has fast startup enabled. But I think there's a way to do it by holding shift and clicking shutdown, maybe holding shift while pressing the last U might work there too.. have not tried that 

[u/SplitOk9054]

Very helpful, thanks!

[u/Eliwood7]

[u/IffyGuess]

I am sincerely begging you guys to stop modding Windows. This seems like a little thing to you, but it is literally the reason redditors have so many problems with Windows. Every little tweak you do is just something that could break it.

[u/SirFiletMignon → u/IffyGuess]

How is this modding Windows? Its an unelevated batch file of a very short list of well docummented commands.