Shutdown all computers on the network (in a Windows domain)

Question

How can I shutdown/restart all the computers in the domain? When I'm on the domain controller logged in as the admin.

The Clients are Windows 7 and the Server is a Windows Server 2008 machine. I have tried

 shutdown.exe /i

and then selecting the computer but it just comes back with:

PCNAME: The entered computer name is not valid or remote shutdown is not suppor ted on the target computer. Check the name and then try again or contact your system administrator.(53)

Answer 1

To refresh group policy changes on a computer, there's no need to reboot. Use

GPUPDATE

If you wish to force teh re-application of all group policies (rather than just the changes), you can use

GPUPDATE /force

If you wish to target only per-user or per-machine policies, specify that with

GPUPDATE /Target:Computer
GPUPDATE /Target:User

If you wish to force the next update to be performed synchronously, you can use

GPUPDATE /sync

If you need to apply an policy changes that require a user logoff (eg. folder redirection, application deployment) then you can force a logoff with

GPUPDATE /Logoff

Similarly, for policies such as computer-targeted software installation that are only processed at boot-up, you can cause a reboot with

GPUPDATE /Boot

Answer 2

The tool psshutdown from Sysinternals supports wildcards for computer names.

Usage: psshutdown [[\\computer[,computer[,..] | @file [-u user [-p psswd]]] -s|-r|-h|-d|-k|-a|-l|-o [-f] [-c] [-t nn|h:m] [-n s] [-v nn] [-e [u|p]:xx:yy] [-m "message"]

-          Displays the supported options.

computer    Perform the command on the remote computer or computers specified. If 
            you omit the computer name the command runs on the local system, and 
            if you specify a wildcard (\\*), the command runs on all computers in 
            the current domain.

@file       Run the command on each computer listed in the text file specified.

...

Edit: As suggested by emgee in a comment, I added information regarding the use of a file to list the computers to be shut down.

Answer 3

Method 1: Command line

I always like to use inbuilt utilities when they are available. In this case the command is “shutdown”.

If you open up a command prompt (Start > Run > Cmd) and type “shutdown”, you will see that there are a bundle of arguments you can use with the shutdown command. The -m argument followed by the machine name, and a -r(restart trigger) will shutdown your computer. The best way for me to explain it is through examples.

In the command prompt, try the following:

shutdown -m \\computername -s

Lets break it down:

• 1.The shutdown command gets the ball rolling
• 2.-m \computername should be the name of the computer you want to shutdown.
• 3.-s tells the remote computer to Shutdown.

• There are a number of other arguments you can use.

• 1.-r tells the remote computer to Restart

• 2.-l tells the remote computer to logoff

Answer 4

I know this is an old topic, but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents since I had the same question and this topic didn't have exactly what I was looking for (force reboot all AD computers and NOT servers or the DC). There is a way to do this with just a windows command, and here it is:

for /f %n in ('DSQUERY COMPUTER -o rdn -limit 9999 ^| findstr /i /v /c:"server" /c:"%computername%"') do start "" shutdown.exe /m \\%~n /r /f /t 0

if you run this on a DC it will instantly reboot every computer on the Domain while skipping machines with "server" in the computername.