Setting up your Computer to reboot nightly

For whatever reason, my computer's performance began to suffer if left running for too long.  It can be frustrating when you're waiting what feels like an eternity to just open Chrome and do a Google search on my Windows computer!

To address this, I attacked it from a couple of fronts.  First, I uninstalled a bunch of programs that I wasn't using.  Second, I set my computer up to automatically reboot every night, which was a pretty straightforward process.  In essence, I created a program that reboots your computer then set that program to initialize every morning.

First, thanks to Computerhope.com, I figured out how to properly restart my computer through Microsoft's Command Prompt (which I haven't used in ages).  You simply type in "shutdown -r" within Command Prompt and the computer starts the rebooting process.

You can actually bottle this up and turn it into an application. As an application, you can reboot simply by double clicking on it.  Just open Notepad and type the same thing you entered into Command Prompt.

Save the file with the name "Reboot.bat," but not as a txt file. Change the "Save as Type" to "All Files."  Remember where you're saving the file.  You'll need to reference this later.  

Next, create a scheduled task.  A scheduled task can be set up to tell your computer to run a specific program at a specific time.  When you set up the schedule, you can also establish recurrence.  To access the Scheduled Task interface, click the Start button --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Task Scheduler.  

On the corresponding window, click "Create Basic Task."

Another window will appear.  Give your task a name and description.  Press NEXT.

Select how often you'd like your computer reset. Press NEXT.

Select the time you'd like for the reboot to occur.  You can also tweak the frequency if you want the computer to reset every other day or more by changing the Recur value.  When you're done, hit NEXT.

Select "Start a Program" and select the NEXT button.

Select the script we created earlier by pressing the "Browse" button and digging through your folders. Once you select the file, you can press NEXT again.

You'll see this screen.  Hit FINISH.

That's all there is to it!  You can check and make sure you're computer is rebooting by going back into Task Scheduler where your task will be listed along with the last time it successfully run.  We can talk about that in another post.