Windows 10 – Shutdown message with countdown and cancel

With such a heavy emphasis being placed on ‘green IT’ system administrators are now being asked to have all the company workstations shutdown at a set time.

This can be achieved through various methods including purchasing specalised products, but often there’s limited ability for end users to cancel or pause the shutdown. This adds a risk of a user still using the computer when the shutdown begins and loosing their work.

These HTA scripts are free and can be used to give a customised warning to users before their computers are automatically shutdown.

Shutdown HTA script – version 1

mb_shutdown

This version of Shutdown HTA features

  • A large cancel button and a 60 second countdown before the shutdown begins.
  • Improved countdown – now runs smoothly, says ‘minutes’ if there are 2 or more minutes remaining, says ‘minute’ if one minute remaining, and only says ‘seconds’ if in the last 60 second count down. A special thanks to Dave (see comments below) for helping improve the countdown.
  • When ran the window is placed on top of all open windows
  • When the 60 second count down sarts the window is placed on top of all open windows
  • plays a system beep when the HTA is ran
  • plays a system beep during the last 60 seconds of the count down

How to customise this script

  • change ‘var mins = 2.1;’ to the amount of minutes the countdown is required for
  • Change ‘<p><img src=”https://www.example.com/logo.png” /></p>’  to point to your company logo, or delete
  • to remove the system beep, delete beep(); from line 131
  • to have the system RESTART (rather than shutdown) change ‘objSystem.Win32Shutdown 5’ to ‘objSystem.Win32Shutdown 6’

How to implement this script

  1. Download using the link below.
  2. Customise the script as required.
  3. Schedule the script to run using the Windows Task Scheduler (or your other third party application).
  4. TIP: To implement this script you could have a copy on each workstation and have a local schedule call it, or you could create a server side script to psexec it on each workstation (calling the file from the server).

 

Need help adding the HTA application to a Windows 7 Scheduled Task? See: Windows 7 – Run Scheduled Task Interactively

 

Shutdown HTA script – version 2

Special thanks to Chris (see comments below) for this version of the shutdown HTA script.

ShutdownHTA2

This version does all above with the addition of being able to:

  • Delay for 24 hours
  • Delay for 15 minutes
  • Delay for 30 minutes
  • Delay for 60 minutes

As well as a different look and feel to the GUI.

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71 comments on “Windows 10 – Shutdown message with countdown and cancel

  1. In addition to this HTA I also publish in the programs a link to a similar HTA that allows a user to be excemopt from that nights shutdown, on the basis they are running a process. The reason for this is that they won’t see the shudown HTA at 17:30 if they finish earlier.The exclude button calls a vbs script which puts a breadcrumb in the registry and force the KACE agent to perform and inventory update. Within KACE I have a softwre item that matches the registry key, that if exists, does not target that device for shutdown that night but will reset the breadcrumb ready for the next night. I’ve also thought about adding a function where the user can say, exclude me from 17:30 but shut me down at specific time.

  2. Shane, Can’t get the code in here so will post in parts.

    SITE ADMIN EDIT: Hey – I’ve uploaded Chris’ version to make it easier for people to access. Thanks Chris, love the work.

    [url=www.mockbox.net/downloads/ShutdownWithDelay.hta]Download SHUTDOWN HTA – Option 2[/url]

  3. Hi Chris,

    I saw your comment on the HTA file on how you modified it to hide for a predetermined time and then reappears, that is exactly what I’m looking for.

    Thanks!

  4. Avijit,

    In this example the image bulb1 sits in a subfolder to where the hta file is sitting.If the file is located in the same directory as the hta file delete the images The time is changed by the var mins = 2.1; value which is muliplied by 60 within the code.

  5. Thanks for this script, exactly what I was looking for. I’ve added some additonal features to this.
    1. Two optional delay buttons, that moves the window offscreen and hides the windows from the tray and returns to the screen after predetermined time, and resets the ‘howMany’ value to either 1hour or 3 hours.
    2.Reduced the window size, but resizes to full screen when 60 seconds left, which is the same time the beeps start.

    If devices have gone into standby I have a schedule task that wakes them with a dummy task at a predermined time (17:30), I actually run the HTA from Kace for the purpose of reporting, Kace actually uses psexec to run it.

    Happy to share the modification

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