Windows Tip: Forcing a remote reboot

Mitch Tulloch, MTIT Enterprises

You've probably heard that old saying, "When in doubt, reboot." There can be many reasons why you might need to reboot a system from applications that leak memory to problems caused by patching. And while rebooting a system to fix an issue isn't an elegant solution, well if it works, it works. Right?

Unfortunately sometimes when you try and reboot a remote system it may not behave as expected. For example, one business I know has scheduled reboots for one of their servers using Task Scheduler and the shutdown /r, but from time to time the reboot fails for no apparent reason, even when using the /f (force) command. How can you make sure your server reboots when you tell it to?

Subscribe to Windows in the Enterprise - Tips for how to maximize Windows safely and securely.