shutdownBlocker

shutdownBlocker is a lightweight piece of software designed to protect careless users from poorly made installers that restart your operating systems without any warning.

The application does not require installation per se, so you can simply decompress the archive to any desired location on your computer. Upon launch, you are welcomed by a simple, yet appropriate interface that displays the available options, namely allow or disable shutdowns.

It is important to note that you need to keep the application working while experimenting with programs that feature poorly made installers. On the other hand, the application consumes very little of your system resources and it is not distracting, as it can be minimized to system tray.

On a side note, if you are keeping too many monitoring tools in the system tray, then you can configure the application to work without the tray icon by accessing the Settings window.

The idea behind the utility is to help users prevent shutdowns that are triggered by applications or users as well as the irritating ones that follow Windows updates while you are in the middle of something. At the same time, the program allows you to block shutdown commands that are triggered remotely and manages to block the local shutdown.exe calls.

Considering that the latter includes a timeout feature that can be canceled from the registry, it goes without saying that you need to run the application with administrative rights. In case you want to be sure that you can disable all possible shutdown triggers without too much hassle, then you could consider enabling the “run this program as an administrator” checkbox.

In the eventuality that you are developing an app or are commonly trying out beta software versions on your system and would like to have control over when you want to reboot your computer, then shutdownBlocker can come in handy.