Automate the Shutdown of the PC or an application

Configuring the automatic shutdown of a PC can be quite useful at times, for instance to shut down the PC after a download, backup or conversion completes. We have reviewed quite a few applications in the past that provide you with the functionality, among them DShutdown,Automatic Shutdown or Auto Shutdown for Firefox.

Shutdown Scheduler’s advantage over many comparable applications is that it offers a basic mode that can be configured quickly, and an advanced configuration menu where details can be configured to customize the process further.

As you can see on the screenshot above, the basic interface mode gives you a handful of configuration options. Here you can configure when you’d like your PC to shutdown automatically.

• After a specific period if time
• When the computer has been idle for a specified period
• At a specific time
• When a selected application terminates
• When applications stop playing sounds (useful if you like to listen to music or watch a movie in bed)

A click on the star icon in the upper left corner and the selection of advanced from the context menu, or pressing F12, will open the advanced options.

The top left options let you switch from shutting down the PC to hibernating, closing a selected application, or running another task like disconnecting the modem connection, restarting the PC or locking the workstation.

The remaining options let you configure whether the program window should be displayed when a shutdown is initiated, whether the program should wait for open documents to be saved before running the task, and whether warnings or other types of information should be displayed during the process.

Closing Words

Shutdown Scheduler’s main strength is its simplicity. It takes a few clicks to configure the shutdown of the PC or an application. Its greatest strength is on the other hand a weakness, as it is for instance not possible to select to close multiple applications with the help of the program. You may run multiple programs of the software at the same time though.

The software itself uses a small amount of system resources which makes it ideal for lower-end systems were that is important. It is interesting to note that the developer has made available a version for all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows, and a classic version for pre-XP versions of Windows.

Update: The SDS Shutdown Scheduler website is no longer available. We have uploaded the latest version of the application to our own servers from where it can be downloaded: Shutdown Scheduler (19)