Member Avatar for kleenex88h

Hey everybody! I work part time in a Middle School Library that has a computer lab in it. At the end of the day I have to go around to 50 computers and individually shut them down. I was wondering if there is a way I could shut down a group of computers from a separate computer and save the hassle of doing each one individually? All the computers are networked and run Win XP Pro.

Any ideas?

Jeremy

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For ’s middle‑school lab (about 50 machines running Windows XP Pro) there are three practical routes: centrally pushed power management, a remote administration tool that issues remote power commands, or a remote‑control session per machine. Each choice has tradeoffs in setup effort, administrative rights required, and how well it scales to 50 PCs — the replies from , and point to those same families of solutions.

If the lab machines are joined to an Active Directory domain the cleanest approach is to push settings centrally: configure power policies or a scheduled task via Group Policy targeted at the lab OU so machines enter low‑power states or run an end‑of‑day shutdown automatically. Test on a small OU first and plan an exception for machines that need to stay on for overnight jobs.

For workgroup environments use a lightweight remote admin utility (for example, proven Sysinternals tools or a classroom management product) that can execute a single command across a list of hosts. Preconditions that commonly block remote operations are mismatched admin credentials, the XP firewall blocking file/printer sharing, and required services (Server/Remote Registry) being stopped. Verify connectivity and credentials on 3–5 machines before wide rollout.

Practical checklist and cautions: notify teachers/students and give a save warning before automating power actions; keep a simple inventory (hostname ↔ IP); test on a handful of PCs; schedule periodic full reboots for updates; if a remote attempt fails, check basic network reachability (ping), admin share access, firewall exceptions and service status, then consult the client event logs. For many schools the lowest‑maintenance win is combining modest power‑policy timeouts with a weekly centrally controlled reboot.

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Member Avatar for UberAAZ

Go to the command line, and type 'shutdown' on any one of the computers.

The info there should give you enough to write a batch file that shuts down all of the PC's.

Member Avatar for nizzy1115

Get a remote desktop program, as the middle schools that i work at have already, and you can shut them all down with a single click of the mouse :) It really makes life easy for the computer teachers!

Member Avatar for alc6379

Why not just go through once, and enable some power saving options on them?

That way, they'd just go into hibernate or Stand By mode, rather than you having to run around like a crazy person at the end of the day. They'll save nearly as much power in those states as they would if shut down, and you wouldn't have to shut them down daily, because they would already be configured to set themselves in a lower power state.

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