Windows 10, like its predecessors, offers multiple ways to access shut down, restart, hibernate and sleep options in Windows 10. You can access shut down options by clicking power button in the Start menu, or right-clicking on the Start menu and then clicking Shut down or sign out, or simultaneously pressing Alt + F4 keys after minimizing running programs.
Shut down options can also be accessed from the login screen as well as the Ctrl + Alt + Del screen, which appears when you simultaneously press Ctrl + Alt + Del keys. And for those who would like to shut down, restart, hibernate or sleep using keyboard shortcuts, there are ways to shut down, restart, hibernate or sleep Windows 10 using keyboard shortcuts as well. On top of that, you can also use Cortana to shut down, restart, hibernate, and sleep your Windows 10 PC.
A large chunk of PC users running Windows 10 prefers accessing shut down options by navigating to the Start menu. If the Start menu is not opening for some reason, one can always right-click on the Start button to access these shut down option. While most users prefer using these built-in options to access shut down options, some users prefer having shut down, restart, hibernate, sleep, and sign out options on the desktop for easy access.
Create shut down, hibernate, restart, and sleep shortcuts on Windows 10 desktop
If you also prefer having shut down, restart, hibernate, sleep, and sign out options on the desktop, you can do so by following given below directions.
Step 1: Right-click on the empty area of the desktop, click New and then click Shortcut to open Create shortcut wizard.
Step 2: On the home screen of Create Shortcut wizard, type the following commands shut down, restart, hibernate, sleep and sign out Windows 10. After entering a command, click the Next button.
For shutdown:
Shutdown.exe
For restart:
shutdown -r -t 0
For log off:
Logoff: shutdown -l -t 0
For hibernate:
rundll32.exe powrprof.dll, SetSuspendState 0,1,0
In the above command, replace “C” with the drive letter of the drive where Windows 10 is installed.
Important: If the hibernate feature is turned on, the Hibernate command will put your PC into hibernation. When hibernation is turned off, the same command will put your PC into sleep mode.
Step 3: Finally, you need to give a name for your new shortcut. If you have entered shut down command, name the shortcut as shut down and then click the Finish button to create the shortcut on the desktop. By following this procedure and using the commands mentioned above, you can create desktop shortcuts for shut down, hibernate, restart, sleep, and sign out operations.
Tip: If you want to change the default boring icon of a desktop shortcut, right-click on the newly created shortcut on the desktop, click Properties, click Change Icon button, and then select one of the available icons. If you want to choose a custom icon, click the Browse button and then navigate to the icon file (the file must be in .ico format).
Pin shut down, hibernate, and sleep shortcuts to taskbar in Windows 10
Step 1: Follow the procedure mentioned above to create shut down, hibernate, restart, and sleep shortcuts on the Windows 10 desktop.
Step 2: Once you have these shortcuts on the desktop, right-click on a shortcut and then click Pin to taskbar option.
I hope you find this guide helpful.
Gary says
I had a painful, perplexing experience with generating a shutdown shortcut but thought I’d share in case others go through similar experiences.
I’ve used these shortcuts in the past and they’ve worked fine.
i made one last night and couldn’t get it to work. Worked in the commandline no problem.
I recreated from scratch today and it worked.
i eventually did a unicode conversion check and found the bad path (see below) was a dash, not a minus, for the command switches.
I couldn’t see a difference visually when i compared the two, though it’s more visible in this comment editor.
I’m on a UK keyboard ascii layout and don’t have a numeric keypad (apaprently CTRL+ALT+numeric keypad minus makes a dash), so have no idea how i even generated a dash. I suspect i must have copy/pasted from a bad source. I know that Word will sometimes convert hyphen-minus signs to dashes, so maybe that’s what occurred. I know there are other methods too, which require a deliberate, specific action.
path taken from shortcut that doesn’t work
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe –s –t 4200
path taken from working shortcut – copy pasting this into a new shortcut works!
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 4200
Nice to get to the bottom of the issue though!
regards,
Gary
Richard-Twickenham says
Does anyone know how to create a desktop icon which will log me off and then sleep my Windows 10 PC?
Mike says
The fix for getting “sleep” when the above gives you “hibernate” is to put the three commands
powercfg -hibernate off
rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0
powercfg -hibernate on
in a bat file then create a desktop shortcut to it with the advanced properties to run as administrator
Dave says
Hi, The icon location doesn’t exit on my win 10, is there an alternative location?
Joy says
Thank you, Mr. Bean, for pointing out the “Important” note under hibernate. There really is a way to Sleep!
Roon Dog says
Forgot to mention that psshutdown.exe is part of a suite of technical tools available at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/psshutdown .
Now that I’m looking, I see that you can hibernate using the same command. But the whole reason for using psshutdown vs. shutdown is that shutdown.exe has no suspend (sleep) switch, bizarre as that may seem. So you can download psshutdown.exe using the above link and place it — well wherever you want as long as you include the path (or the path is set in the PATH string).
I haven’t tested using the hibernate switch with psshutdown, but if that doesn’t work, shutdown /h works fine.
Roon Dog says
I have found for Windows 10 Home Edition that the following work great when hibernate is enabled:
Sleep: “C:\Windows\psshutdown.exe -d -t 0”
Hibernate: “C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /h”
Mr.Bean says
Guys, please read the note “Important: ” in the hibernate. The article do cover for sleep !
SmartSusan says
Another (of many useless) articles here.
You forgot the “sleep” cmd,
Ugh.
bb says
Under Step 2 there is no command for ‘sleep’! I guess you found out that sleep doesn’t work this way.