Is there a way to shutdown my headless Windows XP Pro machine remotely?

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Another way is to choose Windows Security from the Start menu. This will bring up a dialog box that has a Shut Down button that has the Log Off, Shutdown, Restart, Disconnect, and Standby options.

Good tip, Mark. Unfortunately the Windows Security menu item disappears if you customize and choose "classic start menus". The good news, though, is that the task manager, which is what that really is, is also accessible if you right-click the date in the task bar, and choose "task manager". It has the Shutdown menu with all the options you list.
Thanks!
Leo

Windows XP Professional has built in support for shutdown via the "shutdown" command. Here is the useage:

C:\shutdown /?
Usage: shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "comment"] [-d up:xx:yy]

no args Display this message (same as -?)
-i Display GUI interface, must be the first option
-l Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
-s Shutdown the computer
-r Shutdown and restart the computer
-a Abort a system shutdown
-m \\computername Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
-t xx Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
-c "comment" Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
-f Forces running applications to close without warning
-d [u][p]:xx:yy The reason code for the shutdown u is the user code p is a planned shutdown code xx is the major reason code (positive integer le
ss than 256) yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536)

But how does the remote computer authenticate you with this shutdown command?

NT/XP Cross-machine authentication is a confusing topic, to be sure. The bottom line is that the account you're logged into on machine A must be recognized by machine B and have appropriate permissions to shut down machine B. Depending on how things are set up the accounts setup could be as simple as having the same account user/password on both machines. It could be as complicated as a full Windows NT Domain or Active Directory entry.

From:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/datacenter/rrcHowToShutdownRemotely.asp :

"To perform this procedure, you must have the user rights to force a shutdown from a remote system."

Leo

Oh... and the sysinternals tool psshutdown allows you to specify a user & password, bypassing the cross machine account confusion altogether.

Leo

For XP users, why not just click on the Desktop and just click on Alt+F4, which should bring up the shutdown,restart, window.

excellent that last comment my friend.. well done it worked like a dream.

I have tried to run a task used "psshutdown" with -f -k -t and "windows xp shutdown command" with -f -s -t from Symantec Ghost console. However every time machine has restarted instead power shut. Any idea.

please send me the method to shutdown remote machine using vb.net code.

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