Does it happen that sometimes, you remember that you need to do one more thing, just as soon as you hit the shut down button? Would you like to find a way to stop the shutdown procedure from completing? Luckily, we have some solutions that can help. Here are the ways you can stop a Windows shut down from completing.

Stop the Shut Down From a Shortcut

If you have created a Shut Down shortcut on the desktop (or Start screen in Windows 8), you can use the Stop Shut Down shortcut we created for you.

When using a custom Shut Down shortcut, the shutdown procedure is not initiated immediately. A few seconds will pass before that happens, in which the user and all the open applications are informed about the start of this procedure. If you double-click on the Stop Shut Down shortcut a few seconds later, you will be quickly notified of your success in stopping the process. A notification will be shown in the notification area of your taskbar.

You can find this shortcut attached to the bottom of this article. Also, we included it in our Library of Windows 7 Shortcuts. There you will find the shortcut for starting the shutdown procedure and many other useful shortcuts.

Stop a Shut Down Initiated from the Start Menu (or Start Screen)

If you initiated the shutdown procedure from Windows, using the default menus and options for shutting down your computer, and not a custom shortcut, then things get tricky. No matter how fast you are, the Stop Shut Down shortcut won't work. Your only chance is if you had multiple programs open when initiating the procedure. One of the open programs might take longer to respond to the shutdown signal and this will trigger Windows to display a summary screen about the programs that still need to close.

There you will have a button called Force shut down, which will forcefully close all open applications and continue the shutdown, and one called Cancel. This button will stop the shutdown procedure. Windows 8 displays a similar screen. The buttons have different names but do the same thing.

Stopping a Shut Down - Does it Have Negative Consequences?

If you manage to stop the shutdown procedure just before it gets completed, then Windows will function using the services and applications that weren't yet closed. In most cases, the operating system will continue to run without problems. However, it can happen that some services or applications will malfunction because some of their dependencies got shut down. If you experience errors, it is best to log off/sign out and log on again to your user account. This will give Windows the chance to restart some of the services and processes that start at log on.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial will be useful to our readers. Before you go, I'm curious to know: How often does it happen that you need to cancel the shutdown procedure? What are the reasons for it?

Download Link: stopshutdown.zip