C Program to Shutdown Computer

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In this article, you will learn and get code on shutting down your computer system using a C program. The program to shutdown your system is given for both windows and Linux users. Here are the list of programs available over here:

Shutdown your Windows 7,8,10 based System
Shutdown your System Immediately
Shutdown your Windows XP based System
Shutdown your Linux based System

Important - Before executing any program given below, be sure to save all the opened file in your computer system. Because after executing the program, your system gets shutdown and all the unsaved documents may gets lost.

Now let's move on to the programs.

Shutdown Computer in C

To shutdown your computer using C programming, just call the system() function that will call the cmd (for windows) or terminal (for Linux) to shutdown your computer.

Now let's go through the one by one C programming code to shutdown your computer for all platforms such as Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows XP, or Linux based. Let's first start with, how to shutdown your computer using C programming code for Windows 7, 8 and 10 users.

Shutdown Computer for Windows 7,8,10

This C program will shutdown or turn off your computer system. This program is for Windows users, that is, for windows 7, windows 8, and windows 10 users.

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
int main()
{
    system("C:\\Windows\\System32\\shutdown /s");
    return 0;
}

Note - By default, the function system() that calls the shutdown file from the path C:\Windows\\System32\ will shutdown your computer system after 30 seconds

Therefore, the program given below uses the timer to shutdown as soon as possible.

Shutdown System Immediately

This program shutdown the computer system in 0 seconds. That is, here the timer is set to 0 seconds, so that your system gets turned off immediately.

#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
int main()
{
    system("C:\\Windows\\System32\\shutdown /s /t 0");
    return 0;
}

Shutdown Windows XP based System

If you have an Operating system named Windows XP installed in your laptop or PC, then following program is for you:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
int main()
{
    char ch;
    printf("Do You want to Shutdown your Computer (y/n): ");
    scanf("%c", &ch);
    if(ch=='y' || ch=='Y')
        system("C:\\Windows\\System32\\shutdown -s");
    return 0;
}

Here this program asks from user, whether he/she wants to shutdown his/her computer system or not. If want to shutdown, then press y, otherwise press any other key.

C Program to Shutdown Computer for Linux User

This is the last program, that is created for Linux user. So that if any Linux user is reading this article, then they can also find the code in C to shutdown his/her Linux based system:

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
    system("shutdown -P now");
    return 0;
}

Note - To shutdown your computer (for Linux users), you need to be logged in as root user. Or, to execute the above program, you must have to be logged in as root user. Otherwise, you will get the an error message like shutdown: Need to be root

Set timer before Shutdown for Linux User

You can also specifies the timer to shutdown your Linux based system in given (or defined) time. The above program uses now to shutdown the system right now. But in place of now, you can specify the timer. Here is the syntax:

system("shutdown -P number of minutes");

For example,

system("shutdown -P 5");

will shutdown your system after 5 five minutes of executing the program.

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