Windows regulated shutdown software.

phantom_cyph · 03-11-2007, 08:50 PM

I know this applies to windows, and moderators, feel free to move it to General, but here is my problem. I have a...guest in my house that uses my computer, but while I am at work, I do not want him on my computer. Is there windows software that I can install that will allow me to program in when I want the computer to turn off and or boot?

vectordrake · 03-11-2007, 09:25 PM

I can't think of anything offhand, but my favorite solution (for my kids especially) is to take the power cord with me to work.

jtshaw · 03-11-2007, 09:29 PM

I am going to move this to general because I'm sure half a million people will report it if I don't....

But here is a suggestion.. Why don't you just log out and not give him a user name and password for the machine? That has always worked for me, regardless of the platform.

Quakeboy02 · 03-11-2007, 09:32 PM

Enable the BIOS password on your computer. If you come home and it's not enabled, show them the door. End of story.

alienux · 03-11-2007, 10:31 PM

To schedule a shutdown in Windows, use this tool in conjunction with the task scheduler:

PsShutdown

phantom_cyph · 03-11-2007, 10:35 PM

Ok, well, that works in seconds, I need planner for a whole day. (the guest is my schizophrenic uncle, I can't show him the door...)

Passwords won't work, he has a very short fuse and will explode if he realizes that I am limiting his usage of my computer deliberately.

oskar · 03-12-2007, 12:06 AM

Way back when I wrote a little pascal program that showed a C:/ prompt and reacted to DOS commands in humorous ways to piss off my little sister. I put it into the autoexec.bat, so it looked like DOS started just fine, but nothing really worked. you had to type in a password to get to dos.
That shure is alot harder to do with all the fancy gui stuff nowadays

(+ today my sister knows alot more about computers than I do)
But I'm still proud of it.

alienux · 03-12-2007, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalabanta

Ok, well, that works in seconds, I need planner for a whole day. (the guest is my schizophrenic uncle, I can't show him the door...)

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying you want a shutdown that starts shutting down and takes a long time, or did you mean that it STARTS a few seconds after you execute it?

If you mean the latter, that's why I said to use it with task scheduler. You create the shutdown script with PsShutdown, then you put that script into task scheduler so that you can have it shutdown later at a predetermined time that you choose.

If that's not what you mean, I'm not sure what you're asking by a "planner for the whole day."

phantom_cyph · 03-12-2007, 02:54 PM

What I want is something that can lets say, shutdown at exactly 8:00am and not allow a reboot till 3:00pm.

Four · 03-12-2007, 03:01 PM

Why not have a disk be booted, and write a little program on the disk to shutdown if the time is the time to shutdown. If its a time to not shutdown then boot the hardrive. Then on windows just right a program that checks the time every 5min, and if its time to shutdown then it will shutdown. I remember there is a nice Windows API that just shutdowns the computer.

I don't think there is any program outthere that will do it.

alienux · 03-12-2007, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalabanta

What I want is something that can lets say, shutdown at exactly 8:00am and not allow a reboot till 3:00pm.

The utility I pointed you to will allow you to do the shutdown at 8AM, but I don't know of anyway that you can keep someone from turning it back on before 3PM.

vectordrake · 03-12-2007, 07:06 PM

No matter what you try, I don't see any way around him thinking that you're behind it. Why not just set him up with his own user account and let him at it.

masonm · 03-12-2007, 07:44 PM

If you knew it belonged in General why didn't you post it in General?

As for your question, a simple password solves the problem doesn't it?

ErrorBound · 03-12-2007, 08:57 PM

Just give him a guest account so that he can't access your personal files?

michaelk · 03-12-2007, 09:49 PM

A brute force solution would be a timer relay circuit attached to the power switch wiring or the standby +5V line from the power supply. This would depend on the computer and if there is room inside. Using the PsShutdown as a scheduled task would turn the computer off at the desired time.

Now the clock circuit is the difficult part. I do not know of anything simple. A electromechanical unit would be to obvious and somewhat hard to disguise. A X10 relay switch would also work but again a little obvious.