Vista - Computer Management - missing properties menu

In Vista if you right-click Computer and then select Manage, the Computer
Management console opens. In the same console in 2000 and XP if you
right-clicked the local host, or a remote computer if you had connected to
another computer through the console, there was a Properties option on the
right-click menu. This Properties menu item is missing from Vista. Anyone
know how to access it in Vista? One of the options accessed via the
properties menu item was an option (Startup and Recovery) to restart a remote
computer or log off a remote user. Isn't this supported in Vista?

"New to Vista" <NewtoVista@xxxxxx> wrote ...On XP, the Computer Management, local, Properties brings up a subset of the
System Properties panels from the Control Panel System applet. You can reach
the same panels (and more) on XP and on Vista, by going to Control Panel,
System; or by right-clicking "Computer" in the Start menu and choosing
Properties.

In both XP and Vista, you can connect the Management console to a remote
computer by going to the Action menu and choosing "Connect to another
Computer". This communicates with the remote host using RPC; so all the
necessary networking ports and facilities need to be enabled. But basically
it works the same in both versions.

I don't actually remember the option to reboot a remote machine from
Computer Management in XP; and looking at an XP machine now, I can't find
it. Maybe I'm just obtuse. In any case, it is easy to reboot a remote
machine by running the command "shutdown /i", then filling in the blanks in
the Shutdown panel which appears. This works on both XP and Vista.

Hope it helps,
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au

Thanks for the quick reply Andrew.

In XP, right click My Computer, Manage, right click Computer Management,
Properties, Advanced, Startup and recovery, settings, takes the user to a
"shut down" button. Same option can be accessed via Administrative Tools.
However, in XP, Control Panel, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery,
Settings, the "shut down" button is not there.

see
http://technet2.microsoft.com/window....mspx?mfr=true

In Vista, right click Computer, Manage, right click Computer Management and
there isn't a "properties" option. Likewise via Administrative Tools.

In Vista you can at least get to Startup and Recovery via Control Panel,
System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, but the Settings option still doesn't
have the shutdown button.

The Shutdown button provides a few options that "shutdown /i" doesn't such
as log off current user, shutdown, restart and forcing apps to close. It is
a great little tool that hopefully is still in Vista but it might just be in
a different location now.

> In XP, right click My Computer, Manage, right click Computer Management,Wow. I must admit, that is a facility I never used (or even knew existed)!

And, I regret have no information about why it was not carried over to
Vista. Most features that were dropped seem to have withdrawn because it was
deemed too much work to do a full security audit on them - no idea if that
applies is this case. The snap-in had been rewritten somewhat so maybe it
was just too hard ... or something; sorry I just dunno.

I haven't seen or discobvered any equivalent GUI facility on Vista.
It's easy to use shutdown to restart, power down, and hibernate, and force
apps shut - you just use the command line parameters (/r, /s, /h, and/or
/f). The only missing piece appears to be logging off remote users. We do
that using a WMI script, which calls the Win32Shutdown method. There are
many similar examples on the web; eg the "logoff" example on this page:
http://www.robvanderwoude.com/wmiexamples.html

Other folks may have additional ideas for you; hope this helps a little bit.
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au

Again thanks for your help Andrew. Looks like it is back to the old command
line...