Windows Tools > ShutdownTimer > Usage > Conditional Countdown Options

The conditional countdown feature is useful when you need to restart a server, but need to wait until (almost) nobody has network files (office documents, databases, etc.) open on the server. Rather than checking the open files periodically, you can have ShutdownTimer do the work for you.

For example, to perform a conditional reboot when all files are closed over the network follow these steps:

1.Select the appropriate action, Reboot in this case. You may want to check Force as well.

2.Set the timer to the maximum amount you want ShutdownTimer to wait, for example 8 hours.

3.Select the Conditional Countdown option, watch the "Currently Open Files" list.

4.Check either the READ, WRITE or both check boxes.

5.Exclude any files and/or users that can be ignored - ShutdownTimer will still proceed even those are open. For example, specify *.tmp.

6.Set the timeout period, for example 6 hours.

7.Click Start.

With the above settings, the server will be rebooted as soon as no files are open over the network, files ending in .tmp will not count. This means that a reboot might be triggered as early as one second, or as late as 5 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds later. To reboot the server even when files are open at the end of the countdown, check the "Proceed even if files are open at end of countdown" checkbox.

Conditional Countdown Options

The following options are only available when selecting "Conditional Countdown" as the timer type. These options allow you to specify which open files ShutdownTimer should take into consideration during the countdown.

Check files in READ mode

Enumerate files that open for READ access. You will have to check either READ and/or WRITE access.

Check files in WRITE mode

Enumerate files that are open for WRITE access. You will have to check either READ and/or WRITE access.

Proceed even if files are open at the end of countdown

If there are still files open when the countdown has expired, then proceed with the selected action anyway.

Ignore the following files

You can ignore certain files by listing the file names or parts of the file names (use wildcards) here. For example, you can ignore all temporary and text files by specifying *.tmp,*.txt.

Ignore the following users

You can ignore files from one or more users by listing the user names, separated by comma. You can use wildcards with the usernames as well, e.g. *johndoe*.

Currently Open Files

This field shows you the first five open files on your server and is updated every second. If you specified files and/or users to be ignored, then those files/users will not show up in this field.