How To Speed Up Windows Shutdown Process

Are you frustrated that your Windows XP takes to much time to shutdown when your rushing to go somewhere else? If this is the situation that you want to shutdown the computer in hurry, you can make some tweaking to your registry so that it will help you to speed the this process. We have written much about windows registry in the past couple of weeks that it is used to store information and system settings.

Note: Make a backup of the registry before making any changes.

If you are in a hurry to shutdown the computer sometimes the process takes too long to close all the running programs. Windows will repeatedly annoy you with pop up messages asking if you really want to quit the applications, to speed up closing these programs, a few registry tweaking has to be done.

Auto End Task

This registry setting ends the running task and automatically shutdown the application

Go to Start > Run, type regedit to open Registry Editor.

Navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

 

Scroll down to find the registry key called AutoEndTasks. Right-click on the key, select Modify and change the value to 1.

Exit Windows Registry after making changes.

Wait To Kill Application

This registry key function is to set the time interval for Windows before killing the applications to shutdown the computer.

Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Scroll down to look  for the Registry Key called WaitToKillAppTimeout, right-click on it, select Modifyand Change the value to 1000.

Exit Windows Registry after making changes to it.

Hang Application Time

This registry key sets the hang time of the application before closing.

Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Scroll down to look for the Registry Key named HangAppTimeout.

Right-click on it, select Modify and Change the value to 1000, exit Windows Registry

Wait To Kill Service Timeout

This registry key sets the time for Windows to wait before ending services related to Microsoft.

Navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Look for the Registry Key named as WaitToKillServiceTimeout, right click on it, select Modify andChange the value to 1000.

Exit Windows Registry

Note: Don’t get confused between WaitToKillAppTimeout and WaitToKillServiceTimeout, they are two different keys.

Clear Page File Before Shutdown

When Windows is shutting down, it automatically removes and clears the contents of the page files for security reasons, this process takes some time and slow down your shutdown process. If system’s security is not your concern than you can tweak the registry settings to disable the Windows to do the clearing of paging files.

Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Scroll down for the Registry Key named ClearPageFileOnShutdown, right click on it, select Modifyand Change the value to 0.

Exit Windows Registry and you are done !

Now you will see the Shut Down process will be much faster than before.