We have (or rather had) our accounts server running on Windows 2000 server as a headless box. Due to space constraints, we were forced to keep it in our conference room. Since this was used only for referring to last years (and before) data, the server was mostly left on instead of being shut down at the end of the day or the mandatory reboot every week or so(unlike my Linux boxes which happily buzz along as long as they are powered). The end result was -especially if I was out, that if the accounts package did not work, it was turned off and on through the power switch 
as there was no keyboard/monitor or mouse attached to the serverLast week the server finally gave up the ghost and we had to replace the hard disk. The pain of creating the mandatory 4 boot floppies (I had to make 7 as 3 of them failed) and the painfully slow process of booting from floppies finally got my goat. Another re-install would be another nightmare, so I decided to schedule the shutdown command to turn off the server at 6pm daily -something that I should have done more than a year ago.
Upgrading the Operating System was out of question as our accounts software would refuse to work on anything above Windows 2000. Scheduling the shutdown would have been a simple task except that the shutdown command was not present in Windows 2000. After much searching online, and coming up with GUI based alternatives (which I could not run from a command line) I found out that the shutdown command was included in the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit companion CD -which I did not have. Searching online I found the shutdown command from the CD and discovered that it would shut down the computer but would not power down the system. In my case this would be disastrous as users would look at the power indicator and thinking that the server was on would log a complaint that the server was not working!
I tried copying the shutdown command from Windows XP but it worked in the same way -probably it was identical? Finally after a lot of trial and error, I chanced upon the shutdown program from Beyond Logic. However the scheduling information shown there did not work for me. I also updated to rollup 1 for service pack 4 to support my anti virus software. Here is how I did it… (Sorry about the colors, I had not installed the display driver on the server)
Download the shutdown program from Beyond Logic
Open Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks
Click Next
Browse to the location where you saved Beyond Logic's shutdown utility.
Select the Task frequency.. in this case daily
Set the time that you want the shutdown to take place
Key in the username and password of user who has shutdown rights to the server
Click Finish to Complete the wizard
You should now see your created task in the scheduled task folder
This tutorial can be modified to restart the server instead of shutdown. I have not included any additional parameters to the command as it shuts down by default after 60 seconds after execution. You can find out about its available switches by running it from the command prompt shutdown /? You should see a GUI based help screen as shown below.
shutdown /?
Thanks to Beyond Logic for tiding us over another of Windows queer features. I can relax now as whenever anyone needs to refer to old accounts data, they power on the server, and an hour after office closes the server shuts down automatically 
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