

If enabled, it will prevent every shutdown. This tiny free tool sits in the systray and can be enabled or disabled with a mouse click. If you don't want the Shutdown Event Tracker to ask for a reason every time you reboot, then you might be interested in ShutdownGuard. The corresponding Group Policy setting to activate the Shutdown Event Tracker can be found here: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Display Shutdown Event Tracker. This means an extra click to shut down Windows, but, at least, you will always have enough time to load your rifle and pull the trigger when you are ready. You probably know this feature from Windows Server enabling this GPO setting will activate it for Windows clients as well. If this setting is enabled, Windows will always display the Shutdown Event Tracker dialog before it actually shuts down the computer. For seasoned admins like me, it makes sense to activate the Shutdown Event Tracker. Besides, only John Wayne in his early days would have been fast enough to always win the duel with Windows.

Shutdown Event Tracker ^Ĭlick the clock and shutdown -a only help if you are currently working on the PC. To be prepared for the future, you can just create a Windows shortcut and use the "shutdown -a" command as the "location of the item." If you copy this shortcut to the quickstart bar or to the Windows 7 taskbar, then you can stop a shutdown with a single click in the future. However, only a young PowerShell geek who doesn’t have arthritis in his fingers yet would be fast enough for that. An alternative is to open a command prompt and type "shutdown -a". The "click the clock" trick is not the official way to cancel shutdowns. If you only have a few applications open for Windows to close, you will see the "Shutting down…" message before you even had the chance to click the calendar.

The problem with time machines is that they need a lot of energy and, in this case, a lot of speed to be put into action. This makes Windows believe that "now" is still in the future and so it stops the shutdown or reboot process. If you are sitting in front of the PC and recognize that one application window after the other magically closes without your intervention, then you have to be very quick to convince Windows that "now" is not "then." This can be done by clicking the clock in the systray to change the date to a time in the past. I know of four ways to stop or prevent shutdowns and reboots:
