Remote shutdown mystery

I use a .bat file to do remote restarts on 40 lab PCs running WinXP pro sp2
on a W2k3 AD domain. The .bat file contains one line for each PC as follows
('xxx' represents ip segment):

shutdown -r -m \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t 0

Most of the time this works fine and all 40 machines reboot without problem.
However, once in awhile (maybe 20% of the time), the .bat file gets stuck on
a PC (not always the same one). When this happens, it waits for about a
minute before proceeding with the remaining PCs in the .bat file. Because it
happens to different PCs and not all of the time, this is nearly impossible
to troubleshoot. Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening? And
more importantly, is there any way I can make sure the .bat file reboots
every machine ALL of the time?

Thanks!

Torgeir
Mon Feb 21 12:12:26 CST 2005

D.P. Roberts wrote:

> I use a .bat file to do remote restarts on 40 lab PCs running WinXP pro sp2
> on a W2k3 AD domain. The .bat file contains one line for each PC as follows
> ('xxx' represents ip segment):
>
> shutdown -r -m \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t 0
>
> Most of the time this works fine and all 40 machines reboot without problem.
> However, once in awhile (maybe 20% of the time), the .bat file gets stuck on
> a PC (not always the same one). When this happens, it waits for about a
> minute before proceeding with the remaining PCs in the .bat file. Because it
> happens to different PCs and not all of the time, this is nearly impossible
> to troubleshoot. Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening? And
> more importantly, is there any way I can make sure the .bat file reboots
> every machine ALL of the time?
Hi

PsShutdown.exe in the free PsTools suite may work better:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pstools.shtml


--
torgeir, Microsoft MVP Scripting and WMI, Porsgrunn Norway
Administration scripting examples and an ONLINE version of
the 1328 page Scripting Guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/default.mspx

Al
Mon Feb 21 22:24:47 CST 2005


"Torgeir Bakken (MVP)" <Torgeir.Bakken-spam@hydro.com> wrote in message
news:ejiJ9DEGFHA.2564@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> D.P. Roberts wrote:
>
> > I use a .bat file to do remote restarts on 40 lab PCs running WinXP pro
sp2
> > on a W2k3 AD domain. The .bat file contains one line for each PC as
follows
> > ('xxx' represents ip segment):
> >
> > shutdown -r -m \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -t 0
> >
> > Most of the time this works fine and all 40 machines reboot without
problem.
> > However, once in awhile (maybe 20% of the time), the .bat file gets
stuck on
> > a PC (not always the same one). When this happens, it waits for about a
> > minute before proceeding with the remaining PCs in the .bat file.
Because it
> > happens to different PCs and not all of the time, this is nearly
impossible
> > to troubleshoot. Does anyone have any idea why this could be happening?
And
> > more importantly, is there any way I can make sure the .bat file reboots
> > every machine ALL of the time?
> Hi
>
> PsShutdown.exe in the free PsTools suite may work better:
>
> http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pstools.shtml

Is it just me, or does it seem that we are getting (and answering) a lot of
BATCH-related questions in what, according to its name, should be a
VBScript-related newsgroup?

/Al

Michael
Tue Feb 22 18:36:29 CST 2005

> Is it just me, or does it seem that we are getting (and answering) a
> lot of BATCH-related questions in what, according to its name, should
> be a VBScript-related newsgroup?

99% of the threads in this NG could probably be considered technically off
topic. The *.scripting.vbscipt NG is (in theory anyway) supposed to be
about VBScript as a language, not about the nearly infinite number of tasks
that one might solve using VBScript as the glue ;-)...

--
Michael Harris
Microsoft MVP Scripting
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Sammamish%20WA%20US

Al
Tue Feb 22 20:11:12 CST 2005


"Michael Harris (MVP)" <mikhar at mvps dot org> wrote in message
news:uJ78n%23TGFHA.936@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> > Is it just me, or does it seem that we are getting (and answering) a
> > lot of BATCH-related questions in what, according to its name, should
> > be a VBScript-related newsgroup?
>
> 99% of the threads in this NG could probably be considered technically off
> topic. The *.scripting.vbscipt NG is (in theory anyway) supposed to be
> about VBScript as a language, not about the nearly infinite number of
tasks
> that one might solve using VBScript as the glue ;-)...

Granted, and I am not complaining. Straight forward problems such as posted
in this thread are often more easily handled by giving a solution instead of
complaining about an OT post and suggesting a more suitable newsgroup.

But in this case (and some other recent posts), it seemed to me that there
was no hint at all that any of that vbscript glue was being used, or even
known about by the OP. Not likely in this case, but it *could* be an issue
that a batch problem arises from its being invoked from a vbscript with
.run, and if the OP is not questioned as to the context, we could be missing
parts of the puzzle.

/Al

anybody43
Wed Mar 02 07:12:21 CST 2005

shutdown /?
-f Forces running applications to close without warning

May help. If say someone has left an unsaved Word file open the
machine will never shut down with the -f option.

Also for some reason some machines that I bump in to
do not respond to a shutdown (normal windows GUI) the first time.
Maybe you could try sending shutdown twice? Seperated by an interval?

PsShutdown has a similar -f option