18th April 2001

Coming from the "We Need Stinkin' Batches" Department, Lockergnomie Wesley Mangum learns how to make Windows 98 and Millennium Edition reboot clickly. Er, quickly. First off, what's a batch file? It's just a plain text file with a series of commands entered on separate lines. Open up Notepad and enter: "REM This is a batch file." (sans quotes). Now, save the file as SOMETHING.BAT. Zots! You've just created a batch file with one command... that does absolutely nothing. It's a REM-arked statement. Let's continue to edit that file to make it a tad more functional, eh? You can either start over or enter this on the following line: "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx N" (sans quotes). Now, the letter "N" needs to be a number: 0 for LOGOFF, 1 for SHUTDOWN, 2 for REBOOT, 4 for FORCE, and 8 for POWEROFF. Each one will... do what you want it to do. Why even bother doing this? Because you can always be one click away from restarting your system; set up separate batch files for each type of shut down. If you're totally confused at this point, then this tip was NOT for you.