I recently came across the need to reboot my Windows 10 workstation remotely. I couldn’t RDP into the box  – it would stay stuck on the disclaimer splash screen. There was an OK button but it did nothing when clicked.

My solution was to initiate a reboot command from another Windows PC on the same network as my Windows 10 workstation. I figured out how to do so thanks to this article.

To remotely reboot yourself, log onto another Windows box and open up a command shell with an account that has administrative permissions on the machine you want to reboot. Then, issue this command:

shutdown -r -f -m \\<remote machine name> -t 30 -c "<message>"

The above command forces a reboot command (shutdown -r -f) on the remote machine (-m \\machine name), causes a countdown timer for the number of seconds specified (-t 30) and displays a message on the screen (-c “message”).

It solved my issue and was pretty easy to do. Handy.