Shutdown Monitor

With all the hubbub going on about Windows XP SP2 I thought some people might find this tiny little program useful.

Microsoft in their infinite wisdom decided that a user shutting down their computer during a service pack or patch install is perfectly fine. That would be okay except for the fact that if a computer is shut down in the middle of a patch install or especially a service pack install the machine will be hosed. Why the functionality to prevent this isn’t included in the installs I don’t know… maybe MS is much more trusting of users, but for anyone that has ever worked at a helpdesk or done software deployment knows, users will do some crazy crazy things.

So, without further ado, I give you Shutdown Monitor

Shutdown Monitor uses a fairly simple trick (think jedi’ish, ‘this is not the shutdown you’re looking for’ ) to prevent the user from inadvertently shutting down their PC. After you start shutdown monitor, it tells windows that it was one of the first programs that was started on the PC, so it will be the first notified if a user initiates a shutdown, reboot, log off etc. When it receives the shutdown notification it checks to see if the program you don’t want the user to interrupt is still running, if it is, it pops up a msg box and tells the user why they can’t shutdown and halts the shutdown process.

Example Usage:
To Prevent the computer from shutting down while XP SP2 is installing use the following -
c:\> "shutdown monitor.exe" update.exe

When the install is finished use the following to remove shutdown monitor from memory -
c:\> "shutdown monitor.exe" quit

This program has been tested on and is intended for use on Microsoft Windows W2K and XP, Hope someone else finds it useful.