Remove Shut Down from Start Menu but keep Restart

Does anyone know if there is a way to remove the Shut Down option from the Start Menu but leave Restart and Log Off? I can't seem to find any practical solution for this.

The obvious reason is so that I can manage client machines after hours. Sure, the updates can probably wait a day. The real problem is that, in my company, we are running Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with Hyper-V and are starting to deploy RemoteFX enabled VMs to clients using thin clients. If they do a shut down on their machine then they have no way of turning it back on and I would have to do so through the Hyper-V management console.

I know how to easily disable Shut Down and Restart but our procedure for employees here is to do a restart. As many of you may know, changing such a simple procedure is almost always much more difficult than one would think.

Any help, suggestions, or solutions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hi ITGuy505

Try This - Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate Commands - Add or Remove

Danny

Is it of any help ?

Power Button - Start Menu

Hello ITguy505,

You could use the tutorial below to disable specific users and/or groups from being able to shut down the computer.

Shut Down Computer - Allow or Prevent Users and Groups

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks all.

@Brink: When you disable specific users from being able to shut down the computer, what does it look like on the end user side? Is it grayed out or removed or will it just give the user an error?

Between the power button link from Arc and this setting, I may be able to manage what I need. The only problem may be if it gives the user an error. If so, I can almost guarantee two things; 1. I will get multiple calls from people saying "I get an error when I go to log off." and 2. The user will click the button, not notice the error before they walk away, and they will still have shared resources opened up preventing other people from accesses said resources while aforementioned user is out of the office.

Though, based on my searches of the interwebs, this seems to be the only decent solution to my situation so I'll probably just make due with it however it may be and deal with instructed users several times on proper company computer procedures. But it should be manageable since the company will only allow me to spend the money to upgrade small handfuls of people at a time. Sorry, that may have been a bit TL;DR.

I will test this as soon as I get a chance and let you all know for sure if this is a viable solution.

ITGuy505 said:

Thanks all.

@Brink: When you disable specific users from being able to shut down the computer, what does it look like on the end user side? Is it grayed out or removed or will it just give the user an error?

You're welcome. I hope that they help using both. :)

It and the other shut down options will be grayed out like below for whatever user or group you set it to be prevented for.

Oh. So that also disables them from being able to do a restart?

Unfortunately yes. It affects all of the shut down (Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate) options as well.

Darn.. That solution was looking pretty good until that. Restart is pretty much needed. The employees here have been told for years that restart is the proper procedure so trying to get them to grasp the new concept of just logging off would be difficult (some end users have the computer knowledge of a caveman). That would also make it so that some people need to just log off while others with old computers continue to restart. It may sound silly, but here we have everything standardized across the board and I'll have to deal with more by doing that than if I have to deal with people accidentally doing a shut down.

Hmm.. I will have to ponder on this a bit.

I'll do some more digging as well, but you could set the Start Menu power button to "Restart" for now to help some.