I’m constantly machine hopping at work, using remote desktop to administer or actually work on a remote machine. This usually means that every now and then I need to restart the machine, an option which is conspicuously missing from the Start menu – so here are a couple of options I usually use:

1. Run “shutdown -r -t 0″ (this basically requests a restart within time “0″, ie immediately). Luckily this doesn’t require elevation so runs smoothly. See “shutdown /?” for more options (including shutdown).

2. Click on the taskbar (away from a running app) and hit “Alt + F4″ and you’ll get a dialogue asking you what you want the machine to do – one of the options is restart!

Hit Alt+F4 on the taskbar of a remote session, and this is what you'll see

Rodney points out in the comments below that:

Alternatively, you could try “shutdown -i” for an easy to use GUI to shutdown, restart, etc a bunch of machines, remotely.

Thanks for the tip!