The Shutdown Event Tracker in Windows Server 2008 is a handy little utility that helps you to keep track of when and why a server was shut down or restarted.
The down side of this is that every time you need to restart a server, say for a patch, or for a software install, you are forced to give a reason. Some admins find this behavior irritating, especially when time is of the essence in solving a problem.
Disabling the Shutdown Event Tracker is performed through group policy.
The easiest way to launch the editor is to click on Taskbar’s Start button, then in the Start Search dialog box type: gpedit.msc, then click ok.
You could also run it from the Administrative Tools menu, off the Start menu.
Next, navigate along this path:
Computer Configuration
Policies
Administrative Templates
System:- Display Shutdown Event Tracker
The crucial point is that Display Shutdown Event Tracker is an actual group policy setting in the root of the System folder, and not a sub folder.
Once selected, it’s a trivial task to double click the Shutdown Event Tracker, and select, Disable.
If you use the Group Policy Management Editor instead of the Local Group Policy editor (gpedit), then make sure that you are aware of the Domain Controller Group Policy, in addition to the Default Domain Policy.