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Summary: This article explains three different ways to automatically shut down a PC after some time using the shutdown timer in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7 PC. You can follow these methods to auto-shutdown PC for one time or regularly schedule a shutdown timer for every day, based on your needs.
Consider this,
It’s late at night but the movie, game, or any other file is still downloading or installing and may take a few hours to finish. However, you need to get some sleep also and can’t stay wake up. What would you do? You can either pause the download and resume it later if it supports resume or let it dowload the file that will keep the system running for the entire night, wasting energy and resources unnecessarily.
In such cases, I use the shutdown timer to shut down the system automatically after the desired time. Similarly, you can also put a sleep timer on your Windows PC to automatically shut it down after an hour or so before you get to bed using the inbuilt Windows utilities or by installing third-party software.
Methods to Put Shutdown Sleep Timer in Windows PC
Below, we have discussed 4 different methods to apply a shutdown timer on your Windows PC to shut it down after a specified number of minutes or hours, based on your needs.
Method 1: Using Command Prompt
In Command Prompt, you can run a simple command to start a shutdown timer that will automatically shut down the PC after a specified number of seconds. The steps are as follow,
- Open Command Prompt as administrator
- Then execute following command in the Command Prompt window to start the shutdown timer
shutdown -s -t <number of seconds>
- Press the Enter key. A notification will be displayed with time to shutdown.
- You can use a hours to seconds converter to get the values in seconds and exceute the command. You may also use this formulae to calculate seconds.
- Hours to Seconds
- Seconds=hours*3600
- For instance, 2hours is 2*3600= 7200 seconds or 120 minutes
- Minutes to Seconds
- Seconds=minutes*60
- Fort instance, 10 minutes is 10*60=600 seconds
- Hours to Seconds
- In case youw ant to change the timer or abort automatic shutdown timer, execute following command,
shutdown -a
The logoff/shutdown will be canceled and now you can start a new shutdown timer.
Method 2: Using Run Command (Windows+R)
Instead of running the shutdown command in Command Prompt to start a system shutdown timer, you can run the command directly in RUN dialog box. The steps are as follow,
- On your Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, or 11 PC, press WIndows+R.
- In the Open: box, type
shutdown -s -t -<number of seconds>and press the Enter key or click ‘OK.’
- A notification will be displayed with time to shutdown/logoff.
- Again, to cancel the shutdown time and start new, press Windows+R and type
shutdown -a
- Click Enter or press OK to stop the automatic shutdown timer.
Method 3: Schedule Regular Shutdown using Task Scheduler
If you want to add a shutdown schedule to turn off a system automatically every day or weekly at a specified time, you can use the Task Scheduler. This way, you don’t need to remember or set the timer manually every time.
The steps are as follow,
- Press Windows+S and type Task Schedule. Click on the Task Scheduler.
- Navigate to Actions and click Create Basic Task…
- Give this task a name and description and then click Next.
- Choose the Trigger. Based on your need, you can choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, One time, When the computer starts, When I log on or When a specified event is logged as a start to trigger automatic shutdown. Then click Next.
- Chosoe a start date and time when to trigger the auto-shutdown and click Next.
- Keep the default Start a program selected and click Next.
- Click the ‘Browse‘ button.
- Then find and select shutdown.exe (as shown below) or some other shutdown program based on your system. Click Open.
- Then click Next.
- Finally, check the details and click the Finish button.
This will schedule an automatic system shutdown at a specified time and turn off the system automatically.
You may also download and use free third-party PC shutdown/logoff or sleep timer tools, such as,
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