Frequently Asked Questions About Network Shutdown Solutions

Here you can find answers for a frequently asked questions about network shutdown solutions and their usage on practice.

Table of Contents

What this site is about?

This site is a collection of articles, tips and advice about network shutdown of remote Windows PCs in the local networks. The main purpose of this site is to explain how network shutdown works, what approaches can be used to remotely shutdown network PCs, what are advantages and limitations of any approach to help you select the best approach for your environment and start saving wasted energy and costs.

How network shutdown operation is used on practice?

The network shutdown operation allows you to turn off network PC with no physical access to it. Usually utilities that help you to shutdown remote PCs can also perform other operations, such as reboot, log off current user, etc. All these operations help you, for example, to reboot remote PCs after new patch installation, hibernate PCs remotely after hours. But you can get the main benefit from the network shutdown if you will use it for improving PC power management and automatically turn of PCs when they aren't used.

How to estimate potential savings for my company from using better PC power management?

According to latest reports you can save from $25 to $75 per PC per year if you will turn it off during non-working hours. You can learn more about factors that influence your power savings in the article How Power Management Software Can Help You to Save Energy.

Can network shutdown operations be automated?

If you use command-line utilities, such as Windows shutdown command or PsShutdown, you have to implement automation by yourself using tools available in Windows. For example, write a batch file and add it to a Windows Task Scheduler. Professional network shutdown tools often comes with integrated scheduling features. For example, using EMCO Remote Shutdown, you can create as many schedules as you need to execute remote operations.

What are limitations of command-line shutdown utilities?

Both Windows shutdown utility and PsShutdown tool are mainly designed to work with one remote PC at a time. To execute operation with multiple PCs using Windows shutdown utility you have to use batch files to execute operations for every PC one-by-one. PsShutdown can accept multiple PCs as parameters, but it still initiate all operations sequentially, so requires a lot of time to run operation in large networks. Also using command-line utilities it's hard to check operation execution results in large networks and troubleshoot network problems.

Freeware Shutdown Utility

PsShutdown is a command-line utility similar to the Windows shutdown utility, but with the ability to do much more.

Useful Resources
  • Energy Star is a government-backed program helping businesses and individuals protect the environment through superior energy efficiency.
  • Climate Savers Computing brings together industry, consumers and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers.