I wanted to know if we have mechnisms for hard booting a machine remotely. I know that we access a machine remotely, we can reboot it so that it restarts and remains logged off. But what I need is a option to shutdown the machine (i.e. power off) and boot it back up (power up) remotely whenever I need.
Does there exist any tool, hardware+software setup for the same?
I believe this is a permission defined by the local security authority. You probably just need to assign the privilege for remote shutdown.
Have a look here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/aaron_margosis/archive/2006/01/27/518214.aspx