1)  What does the '01' do?  Timing?

Yep.  01 = 1 second.  If you want 3 minutes, that'd be shutdown -s -t 180

2)  Do you call up the command prompt for that from the Start menu?

CMD prompt.  You can put it in a .bat file if you like then drag a shortcut onto your desktop too, or just place the .bat directly on the desktop.

My favorite shutdown method:

shutdown -s -t 01

:-)

Of course, another story is when we talk about spinning up the drives when the computer starts...

-Lashiec (December 05, 2007, 11:37 AM)

I suspect that's what was going on, because if the machine made it past the first couple of seconds things were fine.  Most BSOD's occured before Windows started booting.

Note that the only components I removed/changed were the drives; even the RAID controller remained plugged in.  When the BSODs stopped, I assumed it was the additional power drain from a pair of 10K drives spinning up. 

Angular momentum can be a bitch...