Turning off our PC is a routine task that we do every day, however, it is something we can do in different ways. Perhaps the most used is to select the option to Turn off the computer from the Windows Start menu, while many others can choose to suspend the computer by pressing directly on the power key. Next, we are going to show different ways to turn off the computer from the keyboard.
The truth is that Microsoft’s own operating system offers different ways to turn off the computer and that perhaps many users are unaware, including the different ways that we can close Windows from the computer’s own keyboard or how to shut down or restart a PC remotely or from Internet.
Shut down the computer using the keyboard shortcut Alt + F4
Of the different ways that we can turn off the computer using the keyboard, perhaps the best known is using the keyboard shortcut Alt + F4 , since it is a shortcut that we can also use to close any active window on the desktop.
When pressing Alt + F4 if there is no active window in the system, Windows itself will show us a window that will ask us what we want the computer to do. In it, a drop-down list will allow us to choose between the options Change user, Close session, Suspend, Shut down or Restart. By default, the Shutdown option will be marked , so if that is what we want to do at that time, just press the Enter key to shut down the computer with just a couple of keystrokes.
If, on the contrary, we want to restart, close session or suspend the computer, then we can move between these options with the up and down cursors on the keyboard and press Enter again to select the option we want to execute.
Shut down the computer from the Win + X menu
Another of the places from which Windows allows us to turn off the computer is from the Win + X menu options or the menu that is shown to us when we click with the right mouse button on the Start button of the system. Therefore, if what we want is to turn off the computer from the keyboard, all we are going to have to do is press the Win + X key combination and then move with the cursors between the different options until Shut down or log out. .
Once we are located on this option, click on the right cursor and we will automatically be shown the options Close session, Shut down, Suspend and Restart. We use the cursors again to move through these options, we choose Shutdown and press Enter. We can also select these options by pressing the «g» key and then the «a» key and we will also turn off the equipment.
From the Shut down option of the Windows Start menu
Another way to turn off the computer from the keyboard is to simulate the same thing that we would do with the mouse itself, that is, click on the Windows start button and then click on the switch icon to select the option to Turn off the computer. The same, we can also do it using the keyboard easily. To do this, we initially click on the Windows button on our keyboard and once the start menu opens, we touch the TAB key until we manage to focus on the menu icon that is displayed on the left side from the menu.
Now, we move the cursor down until we reach the switch icon, we press Enter, we move with the cursors to the Shut down option and finally, we press Enter to finally turn off the computer from the keyboard.
From the Windows 10 Run window
Another option is to use the handy Windows Run advantage. From there we can execute the shutdown command and turn off the computer with the only use of the keyboard. To do this, what we have to do first is press the Win + R key combination, which will show us in the lower left part of our screen the Run system advantage. Next, we type shutdown -s and press Enter. This will cause our computer to shut down in a few moments.
Ctrl + Alt + Del
It is one of the most famous keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft’s operating system. This allows us to directly access certain system options such as changing user, logging out, locking the computer or opening the task manager. However, in Windows 10 we can see how in the lower right part of the screen that is shown when pressing said key combination, other icons appear, such as the one that indicates the system language, shows us the available Wifi networks, the one that It allows us to enter the accessibility options of the system and the one that allows us to turn off the equipment.
Therefore, with the simple fact of pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and then tapping on the tab until the focus is on the shutdown icon, we will be able to turn off the PC using only the keyboard.
Create a custom shortcut to shut down the computer
There is another more personalized way to turn off the computer from the keyboard and it involves creating a shortcut with the command that shuts down the computer (shutdown.exe) and assigning a keyboard shortcut for its execution. To do this, the first thing we have to do is click on a free area of our desktop with the right mouse button and select the New> shortcut menu option.
Next, a window will open in which we have to indicate the path of the shutdown executable file ( % windir% system32shutdown.exe -s) and in the next step, the name we want to give the shortcut. Once created, we click on the shortcut with the right mouse button and access its properties.
There, we will find within the Shortcut tab the Shortcut Key field, which is where we can indicate the keyboard shortcut that we want to use when launching the task that will shut down the computer. From now on, we only have to type the defined shortcut to execute the shortcut that we have just created and we can automatically turn off the computer from the keyboard.
