Question

I want to make a batch file that takes a user input in minutes, and will shutdown the computer after the time is up.

I know how to shutdown the computer after a set amount of time is up, I’ve just been having trouble setting that time to the user input.

Answer 1

I think this will do what you want.

@echo off
set /p mins=Enter number of minutes to wait until shutdown:
set /a mins=%mins%*60

shutdown /s /t:%mins%

According to http://ss64.com/nt/shutdown.html the most you can wait is 10 minutes, so if you need to wait longer you would need to add some sort of artificial timer, most likely using something like TIMEOUT if your system supports it (mine doesn’t) or ping.

@echo off
set /p mins=Enter number of minutes to wait until shutdown:

for /L %%a in (0,1,%mins%) do (
    PING -n 60 127.0.0.1>nul
)
shutdown /s