I use my MacBook Air primarily but still have an old Windows PC for download shows, movies etc. Instead of sitting in front of it, I manage it primarily using Dropbox and Microsoft Remote Desktop (MRD). However, one thing MRD doesn’t let you do is restart or shutdown the computer. Even putting into hibernate isn’t possible. So here’s a quick trick to do it by command line.
1. Access the remote PC via Microsoft Remote Desktop.
2. In the Start menu search box, type in “cmd” to pull up the Command Prompt dialog box.
3. Once in Command Prompt, use the following commands:
- If you want to shutdown the PC, type in “shutdown /s”
- If you want to restart the PC, type in “shutdown /r”
4. Press enter and the PC should shutdown/restart within a minute.
In the case that you want to log back in, use the restart command, quit MRD and then after a few minutes, use MRD to log back in.
Hope that helps!