Reminding user to complete particular task(s) in Windows 7 before PC shuts down?

Is there a way that Windows 7 can remind me (with a dialog box for example) to complete some particular tasks before shutting down, such as locking my secret files and logging out from some services?

Solution 1:

If you have logon auditing enabled (which you can do from the Security Policies management console, secpol.msc), you can use the event viewer to find the event for user logoff or system shutdown. Then, you can click on "create a task for this event" and create a task that displays the desired message. As mentioned in the comments, you could also use a logoff or shutdown script.

If you were to use a logoff script, you would want to create the script, most likely using VBscript, and then use group policy settings (gpedit.msc) to set it up. The main function you'll be looking at is MsgBox, which displays a standard Windows message box with whatever text, buttons, icons, etc. you want.

This is just an example, which shows a warning-style box with a single OK button. For full documentation, see the MSDN article on MsgBox.

MsgBox "Please make sure to clean up after yourself before logging off. Have you done everything?",48,"Clean up"

...which gives you