Shutdown Windows Automatically
I wanted to shut down my computer automatically at night so I wouldn’t have have to think about turning it off every day – one less action must be good right?
There is an internal dos command in XP you can run to shutdown a computer, even remotely. All you have to do is create a bat file with that command and have it run as a scheduled task (from the control panel).
I found useful information on the official website and some technology related sites 1, 2, 3.
Of course there are (free) programs that do that like Auto Shutdown for Windows, but why have one more program installed on your system if you can avoid it?
Additionally I removed the password prompt after standby, as described here. All these security measures have purpose when many people have access to the computer – but for a home computer (and especially a multimedia computer) some times quick access is more important than security.
