How to Shut Down the System

The following example uses the ExitWindowsEx function to shut down the system. Shutting down flushes file buffers to disk and brings the system to a condition in which it is safe to turn off the computer. The application must first enable the SE_SHUTDOWN_NAME privilege. For more information, see Privileges.

#include <windows.h>

#pragma comment(lib, "user32.lib")
#pragma comment(lib, "advapi32.lib")

BOOL MySystemShutdown()
{
   HANDLE hToken; 
   TOKEN_PRIVILEGES tkp; 
 
   // Get a token for this process. 
 
   if (!OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), 
        TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_QUERY, &hToken)) 
      return( FALSE ); 
 
   // Get the LUID for the shutdown privilege. 
 
   LookupPrivilegeValue(NULL, SE_SHUTDOWN_NAME, 
        &tkp.Privileges[0].Luid); 
 
   tkp.PrivilegeCount = 1;  // one privilege to set    
   tkp.Privileges[0].Attributes = SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED; 
 
   // Get the shutdown privilege for this process. 
 
   AdjustTokenPrivileges(hToken, FALSE, &tkp, 0, 
        (PTOKEN_PRIVILEGES)NULL, 0); 
 
   if (GetLastError() != ERROR_SUCCESS) 
      return FALSE; 
 
   // Shut down the system and force all applications to close. 
 
   if (!ExitWindowsEx(EWX_SHUTDOWN | EWX_FORCE, 
               SHTDN_REASON_MAJOR_OPERATINGSYSTEM |
               SHTDN_REASON_MINOR_UPGRADE |
               SHTDN_REASON_FLAG_PLANNED)) 
      return FALSE; 

   //shutdown was successful
   return TRUE;
}

The final parameter in the call to ExitWindowsEx indicates that the system was shut down for a planning update of the operating system. For more information, see System Shutdown Reason Codes.

Related topics

Shutting Down