Solution to shutdown desktop computers???

[pilonbrad]

Hi,

At the school I work at we are running Netware 6.5 SP5 and Zenworks 4.01 ir7 on both our Student server and Admin server.

About 85% of our client computers are running Windows XP Professional SP2 (with Novell Client 4.91 SP2) and the remaining 15% of our client computers are running Windows 98SE (with Novell Client 3.4).

I'm finding that a lot of people both staff and students either stay logged into the computers or log off the computers, but don't actually shut the computers down.

I think most peopole will agree that it's not wise to leave a computer on all the time, because of Hydro costs, also leaving computers on all the time will have an impact on the life span of the computers.

I looked on Novell's website to see if there's something I can do to force computers to power off at a certain time of the day, whether there was a person logged in or if the computer is at the Novell login screen and found a few options but they didn't work for me.

Is there software (free or that you have to pay for) or is there a Novell solution that will allow administrators to power off computers at a certain time of day whether there is a user loged in or just at the Novell login?

If so is there documentation or a weblink that will assist me?

I've tried to get the school to power off the computers at night but most people don't listen, for the most part they just log off to the Novell loging.

Thanks!

 

[LawnBoy]

Have you looked into the windows "shutdown" command? You could schedule it to trigger at a set time.

 

[blister911]

Here is the shutdown command for XP: c:\windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 00

I would be hesitant to use an automated, all-encompassing shutdown. You never know when someone will be staying late to get some work done and if you shut their system down without warning they tend to get upset...especially if they have unsaved work.

 

[Pauzotah]

On our Netware 6.5 network we use Poweroff.

http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/applications.html

We set this via a Zenworks policy to shutdown at 18:30 every evening, we have a similar problem where staff or pupils dont shut down PC's at the end of the day or leave them logged in, this software shuts down the PC regardless of their state. We have used it now for over 12 months without a single issue...apart from lazy users losing data when they left docs open!