A command you cannot read is a command you cannot trust. This one is short and every letter in it earns its place — here is the full breakdown, including the two switches people add by mistake.
The BIOS command shutdown /r /fw /t 0 gets forwarded in messages and videos with no explanation, which is exactly how mistyped versions spread. Read it once, properly, and you will never need to copy it blind again: it is the standard Windows shutdown tool, a restart instruction, a firmware request and a timer, all on one line. This page decodes every switch, shows what happens when one is missing, and covers the honest limits — the command needs administrator rights and a UEFI system, and without the timer it waits 30 seconds before acting.
/r tells shutdown.exe to perform a full shutdown and then restart the machine. Without it, /fw has nothing to attach to — the firmware request only makes sense as part of a boot, so /r (or its cousin /s for a plain shutdown) must always be present. Of the two, /r is the right choice here because you want the PC to come back up and open setup by itself.
/fw is the entire trick. It sets a flag with the UEFI firmware: on the next boot, open the firmware user interface instead of starting the operating system. Windows stores the request, the restart happens, and the firmware honours it.
/f forces running applications to close without the “these apps are preventing shutdown” screen and without asking. That is genuinely useful when a hung program keeps blocking restarts — and genuinely dangerous when an unsaved document is open, because the document loses.
/f: shutdown /r /fw /t 0/f it becomes shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0 — same destination, no safety screen/f only after you have personally closed and saved everything/t 0 sets the delay before the restart to zero seconds — the command acts the moment Enter is pressed. Leave /t out entirely and the same command waits the default 30 seconds, showing a sign-out warning first. Set /t 30 and you get a half-minute grace period.
shutdown /a in a prompt to abort the pending restart/t 0 there is no countdown, so there is nothing to abort — double-check before EnterThe command, the UEFI check and the restart into BIOS setup — shown live on a real PC, step by step.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. shutdown.exe does not care about the order of these switches — /fw /r /t 0 and /r /fw /t 0 do the same thing. What it does care about is spelling: every switch needs its slash and /t needs its number right after it.
Close, but not the same. /o restarts into the Windows Advanced Startup (recovery) menu, from where you can click through to UEFI Firmware Settings. /fw skips that menu and goes straight into the firmware setup screen.
That is shutdown.exe telling you something on the line was typed wrong — a missing slash is the classic. Compare your line character by character with shutdown /r /fw /t 0 and run it again from an administrator prompt.