How to disable Windows 2003 Server Shutdown Event Tracker

Posted by shands on July 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

A rather irritating feature in 2003 (and 2008) server is the shutdown event tracker. For those not familiar with this – it’s a dialog box that appears when you try to shutdown Windows and won’t let you proceed until you give it a reason why you’re shutting it down!

Entering flippant remarks loses it’s novelty value after a while, so here is a quick how-to on disabling this feature. It does involve editing some group policies – which will depend on wheter you want to apply this to the machine or the entire domain.

First, fire up group policy editor and make this change to an existing or a new policy (make sure you apply the policy when you’re done!). If you want to apply this to the local machine (or one that isn’t part of a domain) – you can just do start/run and enter gpedit.msc

Navigate to (Policy root) – Computer Configuration – System and double-click ’Display Shutdown Event Tracker’ to display it’s properties. Set this to ‘Disabled’ and click OK.

You’re finished! Don’t forget, if you made the change to a domain policy – don’t forget to apply it to something!

Did you find this hint useful? Are you looking to learn more? Well, here’s a few books that I’ve found useful – have a goosie!