Make a shortcut that’ll shutdown the computer with just a single click.
Windows doesn’t make it easy to close down a computer. But with a shortcut pinned to the taskbar, a single click is all it will take.
Create A Shutdown Shortcut
To create a shutdown shortcut, right click on the desktop. On the options menu, hover over New and then click Shortcut.
In the box “Type the location of the item”, enter Shutdown.exe /s /t 0
Note that the 0 is a zero.
On the following screen, give the shortcut a descriptive name. “Shutdown” sounds good to me.
Click the Finish button and the shortcut will appear on the desktop.
Change The Icon.
The shutdown shortcut doesn’t really stand out with its default icon, but that can be changed. Windows has the perfect icon for job.
To change the icon, right click on the shutdown shortcut and then left click Properties on the options menu.
In the System properties window, click the Change Icon button. You’ll probably see a warning message pop up, just click the OK button.
Scroll left and right through the available icons until you find one that you like. Select it and click OK.
Click OK again to close the System Properties box and the shutdown shortcut should have the new icon. If it doesn’t, a restart will fix it.
Pin Shutdown To The Taskbar.
As things stand the shutdown shortcut will close the computer down with a quick double click.
However, if it’s pinned to the taskbar, it will only take a single click.
To pin it to the taskbar, right click it, then left click Pin To Taskbar.
Note that if you’re using Windows 11, you’ll probably need to click Show More Options before you’ll see the Pin To Taskbar option.
Summary.
This works exactly the same in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. It makes closing the computer down very quick and easy to do.
Although creating shortcuts is easy and safe to do, there are often times when you might be going a little deeper. Changing settings that could potentially harm your PC.
For those occasions, I’d recommend trying it out on a virtual machine first. See if the changes have worked. VMs can always be discarded but your main computer can’t be.
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