How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Ian — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:21:20 GMT

You can also choose Windows Security from the Start Menu, and then Shutdown.

[That assumes you're on a domain. -Raymond]

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Stu — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:36:11 GMT

The real question is why does shutdown.exe require admin privs?

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Michael Walsh — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:48:25 GMT

I generally don't like to shutdown the machine through remote desktop, but I do hibernate it with remote desktop.

rundll32 powerprof.dll,SetSuspendState

[Oh no it's rundll32 again. -Raymond]

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

John — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:51:38 GMT

Especially with servers, you SHOULD be required to have admin rights. Just my 2 cents...

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Ralf — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:53:36 GMT

Since it's a remote machine, I'm fond of using shutdown.exe to kill the thing remotely:

shutdown.exe -s -f -t 01 -m RemoteMachineName

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Gabe — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:56:50 GMT

I recently ran into a problem where a remote machine would reboot fine from the menu, but not with "shutdown -r". In that case it would start shutting down, but fail somewhere in the middle such that somebody had to physically push the power button. That was really annoying the first few times!

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

BryanK — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 17:58:37 GMT

Ack, don't use rundll32 unless the target function is expecting a specific set of parameters!

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/01/15/58973.aspx

You're passing a random value for the Hibernate flag, zero (...I think) for ForceCritical, and a random pointer for the DisableWakeEvent flag. Plus the function isn't cleaning the stack correctly.

Anyway. It's interesting that Server 2003's RDP server allows you to shut the machine down, while the XP's does not. It's not because of some issue with XP only allowing one client, because allowing The One client to shut down the machine is better than letting one (admin-level) client out of fifty shut it down. It must just be one of those features that was removed from XP's version or something. (Or a feature that was never added, one of the two. I guess I assumed that Server 2003's implementation was copied and modified; that may not be the way it happened.)

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Francisco Moraes — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:04:48 GMT

The issue with using Task Manager to shutdown is that Hibernate is always disabled or the shutdown menu is not present.

Any reason for that?

Francisco

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Jamie Gordon — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:11:03 GMT

I thought that the Windows Security menu was the correct way to shutdown a machine accessed via Terminal Services? Or because it can be removed by group policy you need another way?

This KB article also seems to suggest yet another way: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q303070/

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Ritchie Swann — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:25:51 GMT

Personally I don't see anything wrong with requiring admin, or at least some escalated, privileges to remotely shut down a server connected via remote desktop.

It's one more line of defence against some malicious attacker trying to attack your servers by remotely turning them all off. Provided they haven't got an admin login (and if they have, you're already screwed).

Linux mandates a root login to run the "shutdown" command, and I don't see too many people complaining about that.

If you're not responsible for the running and upkeep of the server, why do you need to reboot it? I've got several 2003 server boxes that have been up for months without ever requring a reboot, and that's not saying much.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Adam — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:29:21 GMT

shutdown requires admin privs because you don't want any random person who happens to be able to remotely log into your system to be able to shut it down!

Yes, anyone sat at the physical console can shutdown a system, but they could also pull the plug out, hit the box with a sledgehammer, waft large magnets nearby, etc..., so there's not much point preventing someone sat at the console from shutting down a system.

However, you don't want everyone who's remotely logged into a system (not just DB,web servers, think terminal services!) to be able to Denial-of-service it to everyone else by shutting it down. Therefore, command-line programs should have access restrictions on them.

Arguably, that an ordinary user can shut a computer down via remote desktop should be considered a security hole.

Unless there's a way of configuring it so that this is not possible?

E.g. a number of unix systems have an option to select who is allowed to shutdown a system, from which the options are: only root, member of group (with selectable group), console user, everyone.

(I generally set this to "console user" and /also/ give sudo (run as administrator) rights to "shutdown" for the "staff" group)

[The SeShutdownPrivilege privilege controls who can shut down a Windows machine. The behavior I consider a bug is that shutdown.exe checks for admin privilege instead of SeShutdownPrivilege. But there may be a good reason for it (e.g. shutdown.exe writes to the event log before shutting down). -Raymond]

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

BryanK — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:44:53 GMT

> I've got several 2003 server boxes that have been up for months

And of course they're nice and up-to-date on the latest round of Microsoft patches from last week that required a reboot, aren't they? :-P

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

temp — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:46:34 GMT

using the policy editor you can specify which users can shutdown a computer remotely.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Maurits — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:51:36 GMT

Remote_Shutdown_Should_Require_Admin_Privileges++;

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Who — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:08:27 GMT

This is easy.

Just open a run prompt dialog (Windows key + R) (Start > Run)

type:

shutdown -s -t ##

Replace ## with the time you want it to take for the computer in question (the one you're connected to) to actually start the shutdown process.

Restart flag is -r

So if you wanted to restart, simply connect to the machine, as I'm sure this is what you've been doing and are questioning above and type:

shutdown -r -t ##

If you do not specify the -t flag it will default to 30 seconds.

[Um, I already described in the article why this doesn't work.
C:\>shutdown -s -t 30 The operation completed successfully. A required privilege is not held by the client. C:\>
-Raymond]

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

pcooper — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:37:42 GMT

What most posters here seem to be missing is that shutting down requires Shutdown privledges. By default, just Administrators get this privledge (I think), but you can give a user the shutdown privledge without giving them full Administrator rights. I think that Raymond is saying that shutdown.exe checks for Administrator rights when it should be checking for shutdown privledge rights.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Maurits — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:39:52 GMT

By default the "Shut down the system" local security privilege is extended to:

Administrators

Backup Operators

Power Users

Users

... which sort of makes sense. I agree that non-admin users should be able to shut down a system if they're logged in interactively, as opposed to through TS.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Gill Bates — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:06:58 GMT

So once we have shut down the system, how do we turn it back on remotely?

I'd be interested to hear other people's solutions.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Maurits — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:10:26 GMT

> how do we turn it back on remotely?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_on_LAN

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Huh — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:12:25 GMT

Do people even read the blog post before they comment?

"I don't use X because of this problem."

"Why don't you use X?!?!"

"What a fine suggestion!"

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

RyanBemrose — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:18:12 GMT

For the record, shutdown.exe works more or less "correctly" in Vista. I can execute 'shutdown' non-elevated to get a shutdown, a restart, or to hibernate. Still doesn't appear to support sleep.

The other (extremely) useful parameter to shutdown.exe is /a, which aborts a shutdown in progress. Sometimes I'm just not ready to go yet.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Aaron Margosis — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:31:10 GMT

Shutdown.exe does not explicitly check for admin membership. See my blog post explaining it and offering a workaround:

Workaround for Shutdown.exe LUA bug

http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2006/01/27/518214.aspx

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Marcel — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:07:50 GMT

Of course there's also SysInternals' psshutdown tool: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PsShutdown.html

> how do we turn it back on remotely?

Not having wake-on-lan capable hardware I used to wire the DTR signal of one serial port of my (always on) router to the RING signal of the machine I wanted to wake up and enable wake-on-modem-ring in the BIOS.

Used that to boot the machine while being a few thousand kilometers away. Amazing stuff, technology.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Marcel — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:13:49 GMT

Oh, and of course I could also have just used a real modem and an unused ISDN number. Eliminates the need for a second PC, but then anybody dialing the number even by accident would cause it to boot, which I didn't like.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

KaiArnold — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:19:26 GMT

Also, if you use Process Explorer from sysinternals (everyone here SHOULD be!), it's TaskMgr.exe-alike menus include all the shutdown/logoff options.

Process Explorer has a simple menu option that causes it to replace TaskMgr.exe, which works even when you use tm's CTRL-SHIFT-ESC.

Ways to shutdown/restart your computer via Remote Desktop.

Wes' Blog — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 22:12:48 GMT

I don't how many times I've needed to reboot a machine while accessing it over Remote Desktop. I usually...

Ways to shutdown/restart your computer via Remote Desktop.

Wes' Puzzling Blog — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 22:17:56 GMT

I don't how many times I've needed to reboot a machine while accessing it over Remote Desktop. I usually

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

boxmonkey — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:13:21 GMT

I have the same problem as Francisco Moraes; task manager's shut down menu has hybernate and standby disabled. I don't know why. I *can* instigate a hybernate by using the ALT-F4 in explorer trick.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Neil — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:27:58 GMT

Once I tried to reboot a workstation via Remote Desktop, but the shutdown process hung. According to the event viewer there was more than one person logged in to the computer but I have no idea whom that was supposed to be nor why the warning did not display in the desktop.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

required — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:38:25 GMT

> how do we turn it back on remotely?

Buy some canes* from your local garden centre, tape them together (lengthwise), and with practice you should be able to press the power button from quite a distance.

* I suppose you could also buy canes from your local bdsm shop, but they tend to be somewhat shorter.

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

640k — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:41:56 GMT

rundll32 user32.dll,ExitWindowsEx

[Uh huh, and what flags does that pass? -Raymond]

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

Mike — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 03:04:13 GMT

What flags do I pass to shutdown.exe or the shutdown dialog so I can restart and install updates?

I only see the Shutdown and Install updates, when I really want Reboot and Install updates.

Mike

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

BryanK — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:17:14 GMT

Mike -- I would *hope* you can just "Reboot", and that will install the updates. But I don't know for sure...

re: How do I shut down a workstation via Remote Desktop?

MichaelG — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:49:14 GMT

It may not be optimal, but I use a desktop shortcut with "runas" to elevate privileges. Of course, you *DON'T* want to put the admin password in the shortcut. When you click on the shorcut, you can type your admin password, and it will shut down.

My desktop shortcut with the following path:

%windir%\system32\runas.exe /user:AdminAcctNameHere "%windir%\system32\shutdown.exe -s "

I've got a second shortcut with the "-r" flag to do a restart.

Ways to shutdown/restart your computer via Remote Desktop.

Wes' Blog — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 06:14:16 GMT

I don't how many times I've needed to reboot a machine while accessing it over Remote Desktop. I usually