Creating Shutdown and Reboot Icons in Windows 7

I make several routine customization changes to every PC that I use. One of the first is to make Shutdown and Restart/Reboot icons.

I get tired of the multi-step process required to actually shut down Windows, or to restart (reboot) it for one reason or another. A quick-acting command, accessed by a Windows shortcut, solves that situation.

The process has been similar in Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista — and again is similar in Windows 7. The dialog boxes look a little different, but that's all.

The first step is to right-click on a blank spot on the Windows 7 desktop. That will open the context menu on the left, in the image below.

Then, left-click on New in that context menu, and you will get the fly-out context menu shown to the right. Select "Shortcut".

Now, you get the Create Shortcut dialog box. The important features in this dialog box are the Browse... button (which we won't use in this example) and the text box for our command, and the Next button.

Since we want to create a Restart icon, the command to use is:

shutdown -r -t 0

The command uses the built-in Windows command shutdown.exe, with the paramaters -r (Restart) and -t 0 (delay time = 0 seconds).

After you input the command and click the Next button, the final Create Shortcut dialog box gives us a chance to set the label on the shortcut. In this case, I labelled it "Quick Shutdown."

Click the Finish button &mdash and you've got your new Quick Restart icon. At this point, you can use it or customize it further by changing the icon shown, like the change in the Shutdown icon shown on the right below.

You can create a similar icon for a quick shutdown by using the command as the icon's "target:"

shutdown -s -t 0

Copyright © 2009 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.