Shut IT

If you need to leave your computer running unsupervised, to complete a lengthy process, an auto-shutdown utility will definitely prove to be useful. A good example is Shut IT, which can be set up in just a few moments. This lightweight utility can automatically shut down, restart or perform other power-related actions on your computer, according to a schedule or after a countdown.

The application is free and it can be used on any popular Windows platform. It is distributed as a single executable, accompanied by a few text files, in a ZIP archive, so you can just extract the EXE and run it. There is no need to install any prerequisite tools and the low hardware requirements allow you to run the application even on older machines.

All you have to do is set up a countdown timer or specify time of the day, Shut IT's compact user interface and click one of the power buttons, located on the right side. You can choose to shut down the computer, restart it, set it to stand-by or hibernate or log off the current user.

Once you have selected one of these options, the application will display the total and elapsed time on small window. To cancel the selected action, you can simply close this window. Additionally, the window comes with a few options for making it transparent and for executing the action right away, if you lack the patience to open the Start menu and click the Shutdown button.

The application comes with a few other useful options. They are simple check boxes, which you can tick if you wish to auto-end active tasks, clear temp files and perform other actions, before the computer shuts down.

If you have to leave your computer running unsupervised, you can be sure that it will shut down automatically when it has to, thanks to Shut IT.