Home Prem WOL works, Shutdown doesn't. How's Shutdown meant to work?

Hi, My apologies for asking something which has been asked and answered in many variations, but none of which has helped much.

I have three Win7 Home Premium x64 PCs called BoyToy (my main PC), Salsa, and Polka, all of which are wired to a D-Link DIR-655 router. I want to wake and shutdown Salsa and Polka from BoyToy using Aquila’s WakeOnLan utility (which can also control non-Windows PCs) or something similar.

After enabling the BIOS and Win7 settings, I’m able to “Wake On LAN” both computers from BoyToy (yeah!) but I’m stuck on the Shutdown side—and I’ve tried many different combinations of utilities and settings.

Most recently, I’ve run Aquila’s Listener (part of their WOL utility) on Salsa with its Win7 firewall turned off and no AV running. Listener detects WOL messages sent from BoyToy (not surprising since WOL works) but it doesn’t detect Shutdown messages. From BoyToy, I’ve sent the shutdown message to different router addresses (255.255.255.255, 0.0.0.0, 192.168.1.255, and Salsa’s address) and the results are always the same: WOL detected; shutdown not.

I’m stuck because I don’t even understand how Shutdown is supposed to work in Win7. I’ve found lots of WOL documentation but not for Shutdown. I assume it’s totally different than WOL since the computer to be shutdown is awake so it has an IP address, the Shutdown message contains timer info, warning text, etc.

I’d really appreciate it if someone could explain to me how Shutdown is supposed to work and, if possible, what I should do to diagnose and/or get it to work. I’m running everything as an administrator so that “shouldn’t” be a problem--or have I run into a brick wall having Home Premium rather than Ultimate?

Thanks!!!
Audios

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

Let's try the software that is built into Windows.

Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, and click Command Prompt.

Type shutdown /i to display the Remote Shutdown dialog box (Shutdown.exe).

Under Computers, click Add to enter computer names, or click Browse to open the Find Computers dialog box.

Under What do you want these computers to do, click Restart or Shut down.

Source: Restart or Shut Down a Remote Computer and Document the Reason

Thanks for the speedy reply!

Unfortunately, I only get as far as running the Remote Shutdown Dialog. When I press "Browse..." to add a computer, I get "The Active Directory Domain Services is currently unavailable." If I enter Salsa as the name of the target PC using the "Add" button and some "Comment" text at the bottom, I can press the Ok button but I get the error "salsa: Access is denied.(5)" in the Command Prompt window. If I try the same thing using Salsa's IP address instead of its name, I get the same error but with the IP before the colon in the error message.

This is actually pretty good news--it's the first time anything has responded at all to one of my shutdown commands!

To simplify matters (by eliminating the GUI), I tried running Command Prompt (as administrator, of course) and entered:
shutdown /s /f /m \\salsa /t 1 /d p:1:1 /c "hello"
and I got the same error: "salsa: Access is denied.(5)".

So, now I'm stuck again. Two questions: How do I get Active Directory Domain Services running (if I really need to) and why is access denied if I'm running shutdown as administrator?

Thanks for the help!
Audios

You don't need Active Directory.

I'm not in a place where I can test - so I might be wasting your time...
...but here is what I think that you need:
You are sitting at BigToy and you are logged on to an account that has a password. On the computer named salsa, you need an account that has the exact same name and the exact same password. That account on salsa must also be a member of the admin group on salsa (I think). You do not need to log onto salsa with this account, but it has to be there.

...again, all of the above is just a guess. It has been a long time since I messed with this. I typically use PsTools for stuff like this.

I have the exact same admin name and password on BoyToy and Salsa. Plan B?

It appears that Salsa is receiving the shutdown message but it doesn't trust me. Do you know what bit of software on Salsa is handling my request to shutdown, or how to find out? I've looked quite a bit but I haven't been able to find out what Win7 service/process/program handles shutdown messages.

Audios

Thanks so much! I'm now able to shutdown my computers.

Even better, Aquila's Wake On Lan (v.2.06.4) utility works now for both wake and shutdown! It is a lot "prettier" than Command Prompt and has some very handy features.

One note for anyone who stumbles upon this thread later: I had to reboot Salsa (my remote PC) after merging the reg edit file, a step missing after "...then merge the reg file on the remote computer" below.

I didn't reboot because the video shows you can just change the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy value without rebooting; my best guess is the PC in the video works as shown because the registry entry was already present and only its value is being changed. Merging the reg file generously provided by UsernameIssues adds a new entry, i.e. LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy.

Thanks again!
Audios

You are welcome and correct about a missing step. I had to assign the VM user a password - then I logged off and back on. That seems to be the minimum action required to enable the admin share for the first time. Once enabled, it can then be toggled as shown in the video. (As you noted

Enjoy.