Five steps to make Windows XP shut down faster

We all know that connecting power to your computer has to be the fastest, but not the best, way to shut down your computer. In this 5-step tutorial, we’ll show you how to make your shutdown as quick as possible.

Step 1 – Stop as many services as possible.

The more your computer is running, the more your computer will have to shut down on shutdown. Keeping a leaner running computer will not only make your computer run faster, it will also make Windows shut down faster. This is how you do it:

Go to the Start menu and then select Run.
Type ‘services.msc’ in the Run dialog and click OK.
In the services window, double-click the service you want to disable.
In the properties box for the selected service, choose disabled from the Startup type drop-down box.
Click OK.

It’s best to reboot your computer after disabling a couple of services at a time, so that if something undesirable happens to your computer, you know which disabled service should be re-enabled.

Step 2 – Automatically kill tasks on shutdown.

Windows XP by default will ask you to kill a process if an application is running during the shutdown process. This small registry change will tell Windows to automatically end the process without your confirmation.

Go to the Start menu and then select Run.
In the Run box, type ‘regedit’ and click OK.
Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop’ and double click on ‘AutoEndTasks’.
Change the value to 1 and click OK.

Step 3 – Reduce the waiting time to remove open applications.

When you choose to shut down your computer, Windows will automatically wait a while before killing any applications that are open. Here we will show you how to reduce the waiting time.

Go to the Start menu and then select Run.
In the Run box, type ‘regedit’ and click OK.
Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop’ and double click on ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’. Change the value to 1000 and click OK.
Double click on ‘HungAppTimeout’ and change the value to 1000 then click OK.
Navigate to ‘HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTControl PanelDesktop’ and double click ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’. Change the value to 1000 and click OK.
Double click on ‘HungAppTimeout’ and change the value to 1000 then click OK.

Step 4: Reduce the time you wait for services to close.

Like applications, Windows XP waits a bit for services to shut down before it begins removing them. Here’s how to reduce the waiting time.

Go to the Start menu and then select Run.
In the Run box, type ‘regedit’ and click OK.
Navigate to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControl’.
Double click on ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’ and change the value to 1000 then click OK.

Step 5: ONE-click shutdown

More mouse clicks equals more time. That’s right, why go to Start and then click Shut down and select Shut down? Sounds like too much work to me. Here is a tutorial on how to make a shutdown shortcut on your desktop.

Right click on your desktop and select new then shortcut.
You will now see the New Shortcut wizard. Under the location of this item, type ‘SHUTDOWN -s -t 01’ and then click Next.
Give the shortcut a name, I like Shutdown. Then click Finish.

Just as a quick note, you can do the same thing for a quick reboot, just enter ‘SHUTDOWN -r -t 01’ as the location and then you’re good to go.