Sometimes it is necessary to keep your PC on for a couple of hours due to some background task running on your computer such as downloading something and at the same time you don’t want to be in front of computer screen then you probably want to schedule your computer shutdown to a specific time in order to save energy and give your pc some rest.

Here I bring you a method for schedule computer shutdown without installing any third party software. All you need to do is to create two desktop shortcuts, one will schedule your computer shutdown and the other one will abort scheduled shutdown.

Create “Schedule Shutdown” shortcut:

1. We need to calculate after how long we want computer to be shutdown. We have to put specific amount of time in seconds like if you want your pc to turn off after 2 hours then it will go like this. 2 hours are 120 minutes so 120 * 60 = 7200 seconds.
2. Right click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut.
3. Copy and paste “shutdown.exe -s -t 7200? (copy without quotes) in the only text field available in new shortcut window and change “7200? with your desired time.
4. Click Next and write shortcut name “Schedule shutdown”.
5. Click “Finish”, that’s it.

Now you have a Computer shutdown shortcut on your desktop. If you double click it your computer will be scheduled to shut down after 2 hours (Or the desired time you specify).

What next if you scheduled the download and then planned to keep your system turned on? You’ll have to abort preciously scheduled shutdown. Now let me explain how to make an abort button for shutdown scheduling.

Create “Abort Schedule Shutdown” Shortcut:

1. Right click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut.
2. Copy and paste “shutdown.exe -a” (copy without quotes) in the only text field available in new shortcut window.
3. Click Next and write short cut name “Abort scheduled shutdown”
4. Click “Finish” now you have abort scheduled shutdown button on the desktop.

If you double click on the Abort scheduled shutdown icon, your scheduled shutdown will be cancel and it shows a message like this:

Now you are done. With “Schedule shutdown” shortcut you will start the shutdown countdown and with “Abort scheduled shutdown” shortcut your computer will remain on and won’t auto shutdown.