Fresh Media

Have you ever felt bugged-up with the Start-up and Shutdown jingle of
your Windows XP or Vista ? If yes, here is the solution, now you use
any of your favorite voice or music or dialogue as your PC’s
shutdown and start up.

It’s a simple 4 step process.

Step 1.

Choose the track which you want to play at start-up and shutdown jingles,

Limitations are

* It should be in .WAV format.
* The size of file should not be large, prefer keeping them within in 1 Mb, otherwise your startup will take a bit longer.

If
the file you want to make your start-up or shutdown is not in .WAV
format, you can easily convert them using Jet Audio 7, or any other
converter.

Step 2.

Now rename these files as “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV” respectively.

Step 3.

Now
Go to “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”, here you will find files
“Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP
Shutdown.WAV”, move them to some other locations, this step is
required for, in case you need to revert back these sounds, else you
can ignore this step.

Step 4.

Now the files you have
chosen and renamed, just copy-paste or cut paste them in
“C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”, here you go, now you can enjoy the new
Start-up and shutdown.

Both Vista and Windows XP let you take control of preventing a user not
to shutdown the machine by editing the group policy. For example if
your friend is using your computer and you went somewhere ( and you
have still some unsaved document left) and he shutdowns the pc without
saving them…you loose a good amount of data. ( Trust me I have
lost one whole blog post and project code at same time ). This is what
you can do

Restrict PC Shutdown

* Type gpedit.msc in run dialog box [ WIN KEY + R ]
* This will open Group Policy Editor. Now there are two things in it, Computer Configuration and User Configuration
* Click on User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Task Bar
* Now look for “remove and prevent access to shutdown command”
* Double Click and Enable it.
* Exit the group policy editor.

This
setting removes the Shut Down option from the Start menu and disables
the Shut Down button on the Windows Security dialog box, which appears
when you press CTRL+ALT+DEL. This setting prevents users from using the
Windows user interface to shut down the system.

Now if you try
to shutdown by clicking on start , the shutdown button must have
disappeared. Moreover check the task manager and you will find all
shutdown,restart and others disabled except switch user.

Different ways to shutdown ur pc

There are so many different ways to turn off your Windows XP computer, let's look at some of them:


1.
The standard approach - click the Start Button with your mouse, then
select the Turn Off menu and finally click the Turn Off icon on the
Turn Off computer dialog. blink.gif

2. Press Ctrl+Esc key or the Win key and press u two times - the fastest approach.

3.
Get the Shutdown utility from Download.com - it add the shut down
shortcuts for you. Else create them yourself using approach 4.

4.
Create a shutdown shortcut on your desktop. Right click on the desktop,
choose New Shortcut and type shutdown -s -t 00 in the area where you
are asked to specify the location of the program file. Now you can just
double click this icon to turn off the computer. The best location
would be your quick launch bar.

5. Press the Win key + R key to
open the run window. Type shutdown -s -t 00. [s means shutdown while t
means the duration after which you want to initiate the shutdown
process].

If some open processes or application won't let you
turn off, append a -f switch to force a shut down by closing all active
processes.



6. Win+M to minimize all windows and then Alt+F4 to bring the Turn Off computer dialog.

7.
Open Windows Task manager (by right clicking the Windows Task bar or
Alt+Ctrl+Del) and choose Shut down from the menu. Useful when the
Windows are not responding.


8. open task manager--->click
on shutdown--->hold the ctrl key and click on Turn off::::::: pc
will be turned off in 3 secs.. fastest method other than hard shutdown

When you click on the SHUTDOWN button,
make sure to simultaneous press SHIFT Button.
If you hold the Shift key down while clicking on SHUTDOWN button,
you computer would restart without restarting the Computer.
This is equivalent to term "HOT REBOOT".

Create One-Click Shutdown and Reboot Shortcuts:


First,
create a shortcut on your desktop by right-clicking on the desktop,
choosing New, and then choosing Shortcut. The Create Shortcut Wizard
appears. In the box asking for the location of the shortcut, type
shutdown. After you create the shortcut, double-clicking on it will
shut down your PC.

But you can do much more with a shutdown
shortcut than merely shut down your PC. You can add any combination of
several switches to do extra duty, like this:

shutdown -r -t 01 -c "Rebooting your PC"
Double-clicking
on that shortcut will reboot your PC after a one-second delay and
display the message "Rebooting your PC." The shutdown command includes
a variety of switches you can use to customize it. Table 1-3 lists all
of them and describes their use.

I use this technique to create
two shutdown shortcuts on my desktop—one for turning off my PC,
and one for rebooting. Here are the ones I use:

shutdown -s -t 03 -c "Bye Bye m8!"
shutdown -r -t 03 -c "Ill be back m8 ;)!"

Switch
What it does

-s
Shuts down the PC.

-l
Logs off the current user.

-t nn
Indicates the duration of delay, in seconds, before performing the action.

-c "messagetext"
Displays
a message in the System Shutdown window. A maximum of 127 characters
can be used. The message must be enclosed in quotation marks.

-f
Forces any running applications to shut down.

-r
Reboots the PC.