Have you ever been in that desperate situation when you wanted to exit a program immediately or restart the PC and you were not able to do it quickly enough because there were too many steps to follow? Your privacy or confidential information can be perturbed if you do not have a safety measure to avoid curious people taking a glimpse at your computer monitor while suddenly entering the room.

Of course you can say that the reset button placed on the PC cabinet is safe enough for and instant break out. It may be, but first of all doing that will consist in corrupting data and second you don't want your work buddies, your boss, your wife or whoever disturbs you to see you bent over the desk in a desperate attempt to search for the reset button. That's why I thought it might be interesting to know that there are some easy alternatives for an emergency exit.

Shut down/ Restart situation

This situation means you are forced to close all your applications and shutdown/restart the computer. I know there is the shutdown/restart button available under the Start menu, but what if you had a faster method to do the operation without the need to access Start-> Turn Off Computer -> Shutdown/Restart?

￭ Create a shortcut on your desktop for the Shutdown button

To create such a shortcut, right click on your desktop and select New -> Shortcut. In the "Type the location item" field type this: shutdown.exe -s -t 0 -f. This is a command which will instruct the computer to shutdown. "-t" sets the shutdown timeout in XX seconds. For the fastest timeout we added 0. After the shortcut is created, right click on it and select properties to add an icon. Select change icon (you will be informed that there is no icon present), click OK and from the default Windows icons select the icon representing the Shutdown button.







￭ Create a shortcut for Restart

To make the restart shortcut you need to follow the steps mentioned above for the shutdown shortcut, but adding the fallowing string: shutdown.exe -r -t 0 -f. Only the first parameter changed: "-r" in charge with the restart function.




You may have noticed that I added a "-f" parameter in the command line. The -f parameter helps for a faster restart/shutdown. It will force the applications to close without warning, thus saving a lot of time.

￭ Use a system tray application that offers you restart/shutdown functions immediately

Another alternative is to install an application that offers the possibility to quick shutdown/restart Windows. Such application is Quick Exit. After installation it will place a tray icon giving you fast access to shutdown/restart and forced shutdown/restart. Simple and easy!





Hide / Close applications

If you plan to work on your computer after the undesired person leaves the room you should choose not shutdown / restart, but hide / close applications.

Moreover, some applications are difficult to exit and that means you will spend more to close them. (Example: no X button available in the upper right corner of the window). In case something unpredictable happens (an unauthorized person enters the room) and you do not want him/her to see what you are working on, you need a method to quickly close/kill the application in a matter of seconds.

To easily hide /close opened windows you can try using Close' Em software application. 245 Kb program - no installation needed - which will add a system tray icon offering 5 important actions: close, minimize /maximize, show / hide windows. This means you won't have to do one of these actions for each window you have opened. The application will do it immediately for you with just one mouse click. Save time and protect your privacy.