With the Start menu missing from Windows 8, the familiar method of shutting down by clicking on Start and selecting shutdown is also missing. The most obvious, but also somewhat laborious, method is to bring up the Charms, click on the power icon and then select "Shut down".
If you're at the Desktop you may find it quicker to click on the taskbar and press Alt-F4 to bring up a shut down menu. However, if this simply isn't quick enough for you, you can create your own shut down button by creating a shortcut to the Windows shutdown command.
To do this, open up Windows File Explorer and pick any folder where you would like to store your shortcut. It doesn't really matter where this is as it's a tiny file.
Now right-click in the file pane and select New, them Shortcut.
In the box marked "Type the location of the item:" type "shutdown /s /t 0" (without quotes), then click Next.
Now name this shortcut to "Shut down" by typing in the box provided and click Finish. Now you can right-click on your new shortcut and select "Pin to Start" to make it appear on the Start page and/or "Pin to Taskbar" to make it appear as a button on your taskbar. Be careful, as clicking it will effect an immediate shutdown with no chance to back out.
You can create variations on the button by using various options with the shutdown command. These include among others /r to restart instead of shutting down, /g to restart with all your current applications reloaded, /h to hibernate the PC and /hybrid to prepare the system for fast start up.
If you like, you can change the icon to something prettier by right-clicking it and selecting Properties, then going to the Shortcut tab and clicking on Change icon, ignoring and warning messages which may pop up.
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