If you’re like me, it annoys me that Windows Server forces me to tell it why I’m rebooting my server. For years, I’ve thought “I bet there’s a way to turn that off” but just typed “a” in the comment textbox so the OK button would be enabled and kept going.
Today, I finally got around to searching for it. In Group Policy, go to Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, System and look for the Display Shutdown Event Tracker. If you set it to Disabled, it won’t show the Shutdown Event Tracker.
P.S. – I have to confess – as I was typing this, I clicked Restart on my server to look at the Shutdown Event Tracker to see what the label on the textbox was (where I type “a”). As soon as I clicked Restart, the server rebooted – because I had just configured this setting. I had to laugh at myself for being annoyed that the Shutdown Event Tracker didn’t come up, when I had just turned it off and was writing a post about how to turn it off. 🙂