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

From the left-hand pane, navigate to (Policy root) – Computer Configuration – Administration Templates – System. Then double-click ’Display Shutdown Event Tracker’ on the right-hand pane 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 hand-picked selection of a few books that I’ve found useful over the years:

Windows Server 2003 for Dummies

Mastering Windows Server 2003

Introducing Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008 for Dummies