Since October 26, the Windows 8 Day, I’ve heard a lot about people complaining on “Shutdown the computer takes more action than ever” …
Indeed, the classical way takes a minimum of 3 clicks … We all know it can be “a lot” to just Shutdown or Restart the system.
Here is a good way to solve this problem, we will create a shortcut using the command “Shutdown” + Arguments. The good news is that everything needed is included in Windows 8. Let’s start !
1. Create the shortcut:
Simply right click on an empty space on the Desktop, choose new and click “Shortcut”.
Select “New shortcut” from right click menu
2. The location of the shortcut will be the chosen command. Just copy paste this :
shutdown -s -t 00
The location of the shortcup will be the command you want to run.
NB : I add “-f” to the command to “force” the shutdown. That means if I have an opened document in Word, or a email I am writing which are not saved, there won’t be any prompt to ask me if I am sure I want to close it. I will be closed and all the changed unsaved will be lost ! Take care if you use “-f”.
3. Then Choose a displayed name such as “Shudown” and click “Finish”.
Type a name for the shortcut and click finish
The shortcut is now created and if you click on it, you will see it works ! But an important thing remains to be done : give it a cute Shutdown icon ! And guess what, it already exists in Windows 8 icons 
4. Right click on the Shortcut you just created and choose “Properties” then, “Change Icons”
Select “Change Icons” to select a new Icons for the Shortcut
Sometimes you can get an error, just click “OK”
4. Select the icons you want for shutdown and validate your choice by clicking “Ok”.
Choose an icons for you shortcut
As the shortcut is created on the Desktop, you are able to pin your “Shutdown Button” to the taskbar or even create a tile in Modern UI.
Once your Shutdown Shortcut is created, I guess the procedure to create a Restart Shortcut is quiet understandable.
The only “trap” on it is about the arguments of the command. If we need to type “Shutdown” to switch the computer off, then “Restart” will do the trick to restart the system … Well, not exactly
Actually, there is no command “Restart”. The action between “shutdown” and “restart” the computer is in an argument of the shutdown command.
To stop the computer we used :
shutdown -s -t 00
where “-s” means shutdown !
To restart the computer, we will use :
shutdown -r -t 00
That is the only difference !
Additional readings :
– Visit Shutdown documentation on Technet.
