Shut down a PC at a set time

Ian Paul reveals two simple applications that will make it easy to schedule your PC’s bedtime

RTG Ninja Shutdown

RTG Ninja Shutdown is a single window, portable app created by India-based developer Priyanshu Kumar. After you download it as a ZIP file from Kumar’s website (tinyurl.com/zq2nkke), extract the folder and keep it somewhere handy, like your Documents folder. Whenever you need to use it, just double-click the EXE file and the program appears.

Everything is pretty selfexplanatory. You want to be on the Offline Mode tab. Then choose the hour, minute, second, and AM/PM option that you want. A key thing to remember here is that RTG Ninja won’t work if you don’t fill out all four fields. So make sure you set your seconds option even if you’re only setting it to zero.

Next, choose the radio button for the option you want, which can be to Shutdown, Restart or Log off. Now click Set and you’re done. If you don’t want to keep the window open click Hide to keep it out of the way.

RTG Ninja also has an ‘online mode’ that allows you to set a shutdown time remotely, but we didn’t explore that option as it requires interfacing with the developer’s server. Personally, we’d rather just keep it local.

Simple Shutdown Timer

PCWinTech’s Simple Shutdown Timer (tinyurl.com/hnfyo3o) is ridiculously small. It would be nice if it had an option to expand the window, but it doesn’t.

With this app all you have to do is set how long you want your computer to run, filling out the hours, minutes, and seconds text entry boxes. Then click the drop-down menu and decide whether you want the PC to log off your account, reboot, shutdown, hibernate or sleep. Click Start, the timer begins counting down.

Simple Shutdown Timer is a traditional installed desktop program that works with Windows 2000 or later, and there’s a portable version available as well.

If you’re into the command line, it also works with a few commands, which you can read about on the company’s website.

If these two programs don’t catch your fancy there are tons more such as Windows Reboot (tinyurl.com/zshLq85) and Switch Off (tinyurl.com/2e2fv5t). If you’re really daring, you could also learn to schedule regular shutdown times via Windows’ built-in Task Scheduler.