Windows 7: “Shutdown” Without Warning Message

Not long ago, I have upgraded my Windows XP to Windows 7 despite it has been launched by Microsoft for a year ago. I was so excited about it. The experience with Windows 7 has been great – the user interface is nice and it is quick. But not until I accidentally click on the shutdown button and the system really shutdown just like that. What?! No warning message for me to confirm the shutdown! I am absolutely shocked with it due to some of my works are not saved yet and I have no way to recover it – data loss from an accidental miss click is not fun. This is so surprising and annoying.

I’ve learnt from other websites that there is no setup in Windows 7 to enable the confirmation message after clicking on Shutdown button. To log off, lock, restart, hibernate, and sleep the OS, you have to pass the Shutdown button to reach the arrow button which is too small and could miss the click. And the last thing you could remember is the PC is being shutdown.

One could possibly argue that the confirmation message is completely worthless. When one clicks on Shutdown button, it means shutdown the computer. It shouldn’t be clicked at all if it is not meant for it. I totally disagree with it. We probably perform up to hundreds or thousands of clicks on the computer per day to operate the program like open, close, focus, drag, point and so on. You see, the same action of clicking means different operation in computer for different purpose. So it is prone to make mistake by clicking the shutdown button unintentionally.

What you can do is…

To work around to this unwelcome design, you could change button to either Log off, Lock, Restart, Sleep or Hibernate to replace Shutdown. To do this, move your cursor to the “Shut down” button, right click and choose “Properties”. This will brings out a message windows with title “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties”. Make sure the “Start Menu” tab is selected. Pull down the dropdown list for your selection and choose the “Lock” option. When you are done, just hit “Apply” follows by “OK” button. Now, the “Shut down” button is changed to “Lock”. Next time when you made mistake, it just lock your computer.

I think Microsoft should consider to put back this confirmation message and offer option for user to choose between enable and disable. I strongly believe that computer should adapt to user, not the other way round.