Windows 10 Windows 10 Home - Automatic shutdown/preventing the computer from being usable between certain hours ***in a way that can't be deleted or disabled by

  • Thread starter Thread starter SilverandIce43
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SilverandIce43

I'm trying to make it so that my computer automatically shuts down (and stays shut down) between certain hours of the day (specifically midnight and 5 in the morning). The kicker is that I want to make it so that I can't disable it without some sort of code or other external factor (which I can give to a friend in case I ever need to change anything, but otherwise I won't be able to use the computer between those hours). As far as I can tell, there's no way to prevent me from just deleting the task in Task Scheduler, and there's no way to do it outside of Task Scheduler (ie: by downloading an auto shutdown program) without me just being able to shut down that program's process in task manager.

The road so far: I've tried using Windows Task Scheduler to schedule one or more shutdown tasks, and then using Folder Guard to prevent me from accessing Task Scheduler (and regedit, and msconfig, and command prompt, and any other programs that would allow me to get around it). Unfortunately it's not able to do it - Task Scheduler still comes up under the "settings" list when I type Run->task scheduler, which gives me access to it (and thus allows me to delete the shutdown tasks).


after enabling gpedit.msc, I tried following the instructions here (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...a-user-from-running-task-scheduler-in-windows) to modify local policy settings in order to disable my ability to delete/edit/etc tasks. I went through all the steps and enabled all of the prohibitions listed in step 7, but unfortunately it doesn't work (probably because it was for earlier versions of Windows). Tasks can still be deleted and edited freely.


So I tried part two of the instructions - using regedit to modify the local policy settings. Unfortunately, there was no "task scheduler5.0" or anything remotely similar under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows, which makes me think that those instructions were also for an early version of windows.


So then I tried using the command prompt to limit login times using the command net user (my username) /time:Su-Sa, 5am-12am. This worked perfectly for preventing me from logging in during that time, but did nothing to prevent me from continuing to use the computer if I'm already logged in.


So okay, great, now all I have to do is to figure out how to automatically shut down the machine once, and it'll stay shut down for the full 5 hours.


So then I tried using the command prompt to schedule a shutdown using At 12:00:00 /every:M,T,W,TH,F,SA,SU shutdown -s, which got me the message "The AT command has been deprecated. Please use schtasks.exe instead", so I used the command schtasks /create /sc daily /tn "auto shutdown my computer daily" /tr "shutdown -s" /st 23:59, but all this accomplished was creating a scheduled task in Windows Task Scheduler again, which I can just delete.


From what I can tell, Microsoft has made it so that you can't schedule tasks through windows 10 without using Task Scheduler, and you can't disable any part of Task Scheduler, or prevent tasks from being freely edited or deleted (some edits require my login password, but most don't, and either way I can just delete the task entirely).


So - is there any way whatsoever to automatically shut down my computer at a certain time each day, without me having the ability to bypass it?

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