In all recent server editions of Windows, shutting down or rebooting a server always requires a reason to perform the action. This is an action performed by the Shutdown Event Tracker service.
In a production environment, I can only encourage to keep this annoying screen because it saves you from accidentally rebooting a server. However, in a test environment it can be quite annoying.
Disabling the shutdown reasoning is a very easy operation. To disable the shutdown reasoning box, do the following:
- Click Start, click Run, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
- Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Reliability
Note: If the key Reliability does not exist, right click Windows NT and click New -> Key, type Reliability and press NTER - Right click Reliability, click New -> DWORD (32bit) Value, type ShutdownReasonOn and press ENTER
- Since the default value of a DWORD is 0, you don’t have to modify the DWORD. You don’t have to reboot the server to apply the changes. But of course you can try to reboot to make sure the reasoning window does not appear 🙂