Automatic shutdown when idle? [closed]

We have about 600 Windows XP PCs in a school of about 2000 students, the majority of the PCs are in ICT suites and class rooms. It is a regular occurance that half of the computers are left on overnight and about a quarter at weekends and holidays.

I would like to find a way of shutting down the computers when they are not in use, there are some additional requirements:

• Shutdown should not be initaited if a user is logged on.
• Computers should be shutdown after 60 - 90 minutes of idle time - this avoids the long start up times for classroom computers that delay the start of the lesson.
• An automatic shutdown if not in use at a specific time (say 1800).
• There should be some way of globally disabling it for Open Evenings, Parents Evenings, etc.

Looking for products, either paid-for, free or script based.

After looking at Auto Shutdown Manager and EZ GPO Tool I decided to use the solution I found for the following reasons:

• Auto Shutdown Manager was able meet all of the requirements, however even as a school it would cost £300 to licence it across the site (50p per computer, isn't much compared to the £10 - £25 pear year it costs to have them on overnight).
• EZ GPO Tool is unable to actually shut a PC down only suspend/sleep the monitor and PC.
• PowerDown is able shut the computers down after 60 minutes of inactivity, if and only if the computer is not in use, and can be disabled on a per machine basis. It is also free, only using PsShutdown and PsLoggedOn.

PowerDown is installed through a startup script, to copy the three files to the \Windows\System32 directory on each Workstation, a scheduled task is then created to trigger after 60 minutes of inactivity.

Solution 1:

Auto Shutdown Manager should do this for you and I believe they have a discounted licence availible for school use.

Solution 2:

The EZ GPO Tool might be worth a look too...