Would you like to learn how to configure a group policy to disable the shutdown option from the start menu? In this tutorial, we will show you how to remove the shutdown and reboot options from the Start menu of a computer running Windows.

• Windows 2012 R2
• Windows 2016
• Windows 2019
• Windows 10
• Windows 7

Equipment list

The following section presents the list of equipment used to create this tutorial.

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Tutorial GPO - Remove shutdown option from the start menu

On the domain controller, open the group policy management tool.

Windows 2012 - Group Policy Management

Create a new group policy.

Windows 2012 - Group Policy Objects

Enter a name for the new group policy.

Windows - Add GPO

In our example, the new GPO was named: MY-GPO.

On the Group Policy Management screen, expand the folder named Group Policy Objects.

Right-click your new Group Policy Object and select the Edit option.

Windows - Edit GPO

On the group policy editor screen, expand the User configuration folder and locate the following item.

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Access the folder named Start menu and Taskbar.

GPO - Disable shutdown start menu

Enable the option named Remove and prevent access to the Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate commands.

GPO - Remove shutdown access

To save the group policy configuration, you need to close the Group Policy editor.

Congratulations! You have finished the GPO creation.

Tutorial - Applying the GPO to disable the shutdown option

On the Group policy management screen, you need to right-click the Organizational Unit desired and select the option to link an existent GPO.

Windows-2012-Applocker application

In our example, we are going to link the group policy named MY-GPO to the root of the domain.

GPO- tutorial linking

On a remote computer, verify if the Start menu removed the option to shut down or restart the computer.

GPO - Prevent shutdown

In our example, we disabled the Start menu option to shut down or restart the computer using a GPO.