Schedule a Windows XP Shutdown or Restart

On occasion, it would be nice to have Windows XP shut itself down (hey, now, watch Mac OS guys!) and restart. One occasion might be your work PC -- I find that restarting XP makes doing everything faster, from launching applications, browsing, and getting things done within apps.



But XP is a lot better than older versions of Windows (and don't kill me, I use both Mac OS X and Windows XP) and Mac, for that matter, in terms of uptime, stability, and the absence of memory leaks. It's these memory leaks that make any OS slower over time without a restart. Restarting frees up all that RAM that has been used in your previous session.



So, without further delay, here's how to schedule a restart of Windows XP, courtesy of TechRepublic --

1. Go to Control Panel | Scheduled Tasks


2. Double-click Add Scheduled Task to launch the Scheduled Task Wizard


3. Click Next and then click the Browse button


4. Access the Windows\System32 folder, select Shutdown.exe, and click Open


5. Follow the wizard through the next two screens to give the task a name and choose a schedule


6. Enter your user account name and password and click Next


7. Select the Open Advanced Properties check box and click Finish


8. In the task’s Properties dialog box, add the /r parameter to the end of the command line in the Run text box and click OK (Be sure to include a space between the last character in the command name and the first character in the parameter list)


9. Enter your user account name and password and click OK

Pretty simple.



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