Categories: Windows 11 & Windows 10

SOLVED: How to Shutdown or Restart a Windows 8 PC from a Remote Desktop (RDP) Session

In Windows 7 and Vista you could do this by clicking START, WINDOWS SECURITY and then RESTART.  Apparently WINDOWS SECURITY link has been removed from Win8 sooo I can think of just two ways to easily reboot a Win8 machine from an RDP session:

  1. on the tile page type RUN (select APPS on the top right) and click RUN, then enter:
    shutdown -r -f Reboot
    shutdown -f Shutdown
  2. Press ALT+F4 (i.e. close) and then select RESTART or SHUTDOWN

I hope this helps.

View Comments

  • Awesome post. Now I can Remotely shutdown pc with my android phone in just one click. This is realoy looks like a professional.
    Thank you

    • I am amazed that such a common task is not exposed more. TOO MANY CLICKS!!!

      I am hopeful that the START BUTTON will make its return at SP1 when corporations still haven't purchased AND installed any notable volume of Win8.

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Published by
Ian Matthews
Tags: rdpremote desktopRestart Windows 8win8
12 years ago

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