Shutting Down

You can use the ExitWindowsEx function to shut down the system. Shutting down flushes file buffers to disk and brings the system to a condition in which it is safe to turn off the computer.

Windows NT: The following example enables the SE_SHUTDOWN_NAME privilege and then shuts down the system.

HANDLE hToken; 
TOKEN_PRIVILEGES tkp; 
 
// Get a token for this process. 
 
if (!OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), 
        TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_QUERY, &hToken)) 
    error("OpenProcessToken"); 
 
// Get the LUID for the shutdown privilege. 
 
LookupPrivilegeValue(NULL, SE_SHUTDOWN_NAME, 
        &tkp.Privileges[0].Luid); 
 
tkp.PrivilegeCount = 1;  // one privilege to set    
tkp.Privileges[0].Attributes = SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED; 
 
// Get the shutdown privilege for this process. 
 
AdjustTokenPrivileges(hToken, FALSE, &tkp, 0, 
        (PTOKEN_PRIVILEGES)NULL, 0); 
 
// Cannot test the return value of AdjustTokenPrivileges. 
 
if (GetLastError() != ERROR_SUCCESS) 
    error("AdjustTokenPrivileges"); 
 
// Shut down the system and force all applications to close. 
 
if (!ExitWindowsEx(EWX_SHUTDOWN | EWX_FORCE, 0)) 
    error("ExitWindowsEx"); 
 

For more information about setting security privileges, see Privileges.