How to: Restart a Remote Server Using Command Prompt

Syed Aslam Basha here from the Information Security Tools team.

At times the servers are remotely located and doesn’t respond and you need to restart them. You can contact helpdesk which would involve some time. I found an easy way to do it so thought I would share it.

Launch command prompt (as administrator) and run the below command. User should have administrator permissions on the server.

  1: SHUTDOWN /r /f /t 0 /m \\<ServerName> /c "<Description>"

/r         Shutdown and restart the computer.

/f         Force running applications to close without forewarning users.

/t xxx     Set the time-out period before shutdown to xxx seconds.
           The valid range is 0-600, with a default of 30.

/m \\computer Specify the target computer.

/c "comment" Comment on the reason for the restart or shutdown.

If there aren’t any issues the system will be restarted

  1: C:\Windows\system32>;SHUTDOWN /r /f /t 0 /m \\xyz /c "Hotfix Installation"

Modify the above script parameters appropriately to restart remote server successfully!

-Syed Aslam Basha ( syedab@microsoft.com )

Microsoft Information Security Tools (IST) Team

Test Lead

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