PC Nightly Shutdown

[Tefters]

Morning all,

 

What are people currently using to shutdown their PC's every night?

 

I previous used PowerShell scripts which read all the computers from AD and then sent a shutdown command to them from a DC but as of a year ago it has become rather unstable and hangs for no particular reason so curious about other methods.

[Jaan]

We have PDQ here.... and we have the option to use Impero also.

[Rob_D]

We're using a 3rd party tool (but I'm pretty sure that's just using powershell to read AD OUs and send a shutdown command).

 

Previously, I've used a text file of computer names exported from AD and read by a powershell/batch script (but that was a really small school), or a GPO provisioned scheduled task.

[Olliedawg]

Group policy with a scheduled task. Only applies to desktop machines in school (IT rooms, classroom's, offices etc..). Runs every night at 8:30 runs shutdown /s /t 0

[CHiLL]

We have Impero and utilise it's shutdown options on specific groups of devices.

[NegativeKillDeath]

SCCM power management to set peak and off-peak power settings. Different settings targeted to different collection so that some PC will remain on later in the evening.

[msi_school]

A number of nightly PS exec script running from a scheduled task on a server, that do different rooms/areas and the electronic signage. I find this is easier to make changes too for parent evenings and etc. where they want certain devices left on later. Although it shuts the devices down one at a time it takes a while to finish.

[ovenchips]

Just a simple GPO Scheduled task here, all desktops go down at 7PM

[David44]

Just a simple GPO Scheduled task here, all desktops go down at 7PM

 

What do you do about open evenings?

 

Can you quickly update the scheduled tasks on every PCs so they don't run that day?

[Tefters]

Cheers lads, PS Shutdown script will be my next hit. Dunno why my PowerShell scripts are hanging / inconsistent anymore, ran them for years and everything worked great.

[DavR]

What do you do about open evenings?

 

Can you quickly update the scheduled tasks on every PCs so they don't run that day?

 

We run a scheduled task via GPO as well, but, we don't run ours til 9pm for the above reason.

 

Bit of a shame to leave so many workstations running for up to 2hrs/day extra, but trying to change or exclude devices for evening events was just too much extra complication.

[jthompson]

How about having a local scheduled task run a script that first checks for the presence of a file on the network before proceeding with shutting down? If the file isn't there, it skips the shutdown command and leaves the machine up. On an open evening, or whatever, you just need to drop the file into place. You could even have another script on a server scheduled to drop said file so that you can schedule your shutdown exemptions well ahead of time.

[ovenchips]

Yep, we apply the GPO per Room OU, so we just remove the rooms being used the night before and force a gpupdate (and pray)

[Sephiroth]

We have a GPO scheduled task per day, per timeslot. So there's a 10pm shutdown where every pc goes off; a 5pm shutdown where everything that isn't in a group for exemptions goes off (set by item level targeting), and a 3:30pm task where every curriculum pc goes off (specific OU).

 

When we have a need to stop shutdowns, we just disable the relevant tasks for the specified day, up to 6 days in advance.