How To disable the Shutdown Tracker in Windows Server 2008 R2

I use a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine that is installed on my Lenovo W510 laptop to do demonstrations almost every day.  Normally I would recommend that you leave your servers running all the time, however in this case I have a limitation of battery life that does not allow that practice and so I end up shutting the server down almost every day.  As you are aware when you shut down Windows Server 2008 R2 there is a cool feature that prompts you for a reason why you are shutting down the server.  The feature is called the Shutdown Event Tracker.  Again normally I love the shutdown tracker because it provides historical context to the reasons for shutting down a server.  In my case it is an annoyance that slows the process of shut down.  So the question is how do you disable the shutdown event tracker?

1. Open Group Policy editor. You could use MMC and add the local group policy snap in or you can simply click on Start and then type gpedit.msc.

2. Navigate to Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System

3. Find the setting called “Display Shutdown Event Tracker” You will have to scroll down a little to get past the containers of settings and then find it.  

4. Double click “Display Shutdown Event Tracker” This will open the settings for the policy.  

5. Because the policy says “Display Shutdown Event tracker” its default behavior when not configured is to display the tracker. We want it to go away so we will select the radio button to “Disable” the setting.  

6. Click OK, then close the local group policy editor.

And there you have it! No more Shutdown Event Tracker!

An additional note.  As you change the setting for this group policy it is also important to note that the same shutdown tracker could also be implemented on the workstation side of your network if you should choose to do so, and both server and workstation operations for Shutdown event tracker are managed from this single group policy setting.