"Call for Help" recently received this email from Christina.

Can you suggest a program that will shutdown Windows at a certain time? My teenager stays up until 3-4am and I'm looking for something that will cut him off.

We've showed how to limit someone from using certain programs or files in XP, but this question requires a different approach.

Our first inclination was to create a one-click shutdown shortcut and then use Windows' Task Scheduler to execute the one-click shutdown at a specified time. If you're the administrator and set this up in Windows 2000/XP, then those who don't have administrator access won't be able to disable this task.

We found that this solution worked great but it was missing one thing. It didn't prevent you from turning the PC on again after it was shutdown. OK, back to the drawing board. Since today's computer-savvy teenagers are probably also the resident PC gurus in the family, we'll need to come up with a more solid solution that isn't easy to circumvent.

This means that we'll also have to come up with some sort of password protection to ensure that once this shutdown feature is implemented that it will stay in place. To do this we need to install some kind of third-party application since no native Windows feature meets these criteria.

We discovered that there are tons of programs, both freeware and shareware, designed to turn off your computer at a certain time. But only a few of them offer password protection. After installing numerous applications, we discovered that Sleepy 5.0i by Alex Benenson, Lockdown v1.2 from Security Software, and ShutDown Now! v4.51 from Dynamic Worlds would do the job.

Sleepy 5.0i is probably the best shutdown timer we tried. It's free, features multilanguage support, and runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, NT 4.0, and XP. Sleepy lets you specify at what hours and days you'd like your PC to shut down. If you set the option to limit the use of your PC for a period of eight hours after it has been shut down, then Sleepy will let you turn it back on for only five minutes during this period before shutting down again. Sleepy also features password-protection to prevent users from making changes to its settings.

Lockdown is designed for Windows 95, 98, and Me. Its main purpose is to prevent someone from tampering with your machine. It features an easy-to-use interface, password protection, Windows system locking, automatic shutdown scheduling, control panel locking, countdown timer, time spent online monitoring, and also prevents unauthorized software installations. Lockdown sells for $29.95.

ShutDown Now! sells for $19.50 and has many of the same features as Lockdown. Where it seriously differs is its horrendous interface. The program has received splendid reviews and works excellently but it takes some time to figure out how to set it up. For this reason, give Sleepy 5.0i and Lockdown a try.