You want to disable the Shutdown Tracker from running at system startup on lab or test systems because it is annoying. Shutdown Tracker is a new feature of Windows Server 2003 that prompts you to provide a description of the reason why a server is being shut down or restarted. If the server unexpectedly restarted, you are prompted during logon for this information.

You need to reboot the system for the changes to take effect after performing one of the following.

Using a graphical user interface

1. Open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and connect to the target machine.
2. In the left pane, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Policies > Microsoft > Windows NT.
3. If there is no subkey called Reliability, create it by right-clicking Windows NT, selecting New Key, and typing Reliability.
4. Right-click Reliability and select New > DWORD Value.
5. In the right pane, type ShutdownReasonOn and hit enter. Leave the default value set to 0.

You can also disable Shutdown Tracker using group policy. The settings for it are located in Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Display Shutdown System Tracker.

Using a command-line interface
The following command disables the Shutdown Tracker:

> reg add "\\\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Reliability" /v
 ShutdownReasonOn /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Using VBScript

' This code disables the Shutdown Tracker from running.
 ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------
 intEnable = 0      ' 0 = disable; 1 = enable screen
 strComputer = "."  ' e.g., rallen-srv01
 ' ------ END CONFIGURATION ---------
 const HKLM = &H80000002
 strKeyPath = "SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Reliability"
 set objReg = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & _
                        "\root\default:StdRegProv")
 intRC1 = objReg.CreateKey(HKLM,strKeyPath)
 intRC2 = objReg.SetDwordValue(HKLM, strKeyPath, "ShutdownReasonOn", intEnable)
 if intRC1 <> 0 or intRC2 <> 0 then
    WScript.Echo "Error setting registry value: " & intRC
 else
    WScript.Echo "Successfully disabled shutdown tracker"
 end if

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Shutdown Tracker is a very useful feature. In fact, I’m glad Microsoft added it, but it can be annoying on test systems that you want to restart or shut down frequently. After Shutdown Tracker runs, it creates event 1074 in the System event log. Here is an example:

Event Type:    Information
 Event Source:    USER32
 Event Category:    None
 Event ID:    1074
 Date:        10/11/2003
 Time:        6:50:42 PM
 User:        rallen-w2k3\administrator
 Computer:    RALLEN-W2K3
 Description:
 The process Explorer.EXE has initiated the restart of computer RALLEN-W2K3 on behalf
 of user RALLEN-W2K3\Administrator for the following reason: Other (Planned)
  Reason Code: 0x85000000
  Shutdown Type: restart
  Comment: Just installed a hotfix.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/
 events.asp.
 Data:
 0000: 00 00 00 85               ...

You can even customize Shutdown Tracker if you want. You can create your own shutdown reasons. There are eight by default. All it takes is some more registry changes. See MS KB 293814 for more information.

Tags: disable

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm and is filed under System configuration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.