It can be a single click away.
Sure. I’ll show you how.
I question your need to restart so frequently, but I’ll trust your motives.
Besides, the technique I’ll show you applies to more than just restarting.
One click restart
Tired of clicking through three menus every time you restart your computer? You can turn that into a single click by creating a desktop shortcut, giving it a custom icon, and pinning it to your taskbar. Even if a one-click restart isn’t what you need, you can use these same tricks for other programs, too.
Traditional restart
A typical way to restart your computer involves three clicks:
- Right-click on the Start button.
- Click on Shutdown or sign out.
- Click on Restart.
But perhaps that’s two clicks too many.
Restart shortcut
We’ll start by creating a shortcut on your desktop. That shortcut will run the “shutdown” command with parameters to perform an immediate restart.
Right-click on an empty area of the desktop. Click on New and then Shortcut. Enter the following as the “location” of the item:
shutdown /r /t 0
“/r” means restart, and “/t 0” means with a time delay of zero seconds, meaning immediately. (Note that there are spaces between each of the parameters.)
You should see something similar to this:
Click Next and give the shortcut a name, like “Restart”. The result will be a desktop shortcut.
If you were to double-click this, your machine would restart.
We’re down to two clicks. Before we get it down to one, let’s make the shortcut look more distinctive.
Customizing the shortcut icon
As we’ll see in a moment, we’re on a path to a one-click restart. That means we’ll want the shortcut to be easily identifiable to avoid clicking on it accidentally.
Right-click on the shortcut and then click on Properties.
Click on Change Icon… and you will likely get an error message.
Not a problem. Click OK, and you’ll be shown the icons contained in the system file “SHELL32.DLL”.
There are dozens of icons to choose from. Scroll through the list, click on the icon you want to use, and click on OK. Click on OK again to close Properties. Your desktop shortcut will change.
Now we’re ready to remove one more click.
Pin it to the taskbar
Right-click on the shortcut and click on Show more options.
Click on Pin to taskbar.
Now your shortcut will be visible on the taskbar.
A single click on that shortcut will now restart your machine.
Do this
While having a one-click restart seems a tad unusual, the techniques I’ve outlined above — creating a shortcut, changing its icon, and pinning it to the taskbar — can all be used for many other situations and programs. Even if you don’t need such an accessible restart, you now have tools you can use for other, perhaps more common, reasons.
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