How to shut down a Windows 8.1 Pro computer in remote session?

Windows 8 makes it less easy to click shutdown or restart through a Remote Desktop session. If you:

• Click [Start Screen] > Settings > Power — you can only Disconnect.
• Type Ctrl+Alt+End — you gain Lock, Sign-out, Change Password and Task Manager.
• Right-click your User Account picture — you can Change Account Picture, Lock and Sign-out.
• Create a desktop shortcut to shutdown

To shutdown through the UI, you must drop to the desktop (Windows key + D) and type Alt+F4 to reveal a shutdown dialogue box.

However, this assumes that the desktop actually has the focus and no other windows are open otherwise, Alt+F4 will simply close the active window.

So if you have multiple windows open, you’ll need to minimize them all first.

Switch to the desktop and press AltF4. In the dialog that shows there will be a shutdown option.

The reasoning behind this is if you are working from a remote computer and you shut it down, how do you turn it back on? It is a "Safty" feature to prevent a remote computer from becoming in a unuseable state.

As for work arounds, shutdown really is the best way. You can always make a shortcut to the program with the command line arguments /s /t 0 included if you want a icon to do it. Or if you really must have a GUI you could have your shortcut be to shutdown /i, however I think that GUI is a lot more "abnormal" than typing something in the command line.

(One thing you may want to check, I don't have a windows 8 box in front of me to check, but from inside the RDP session do a Ctrl-Alt-End, this sends a Ctrl-Alt-Del to the remote computer and there may be a shutdown command from the menu that comes up)