Speed up XP Shutdown

[MadMax]

http://www.tweakers.com.au/
Tweakers Australia: A member in our forums found a little hack, actually a registry edit that is supposed to speed up the Windows XP shutdown command by altering the WaitToKillServiceTimeout key. I tried it and it certainly shows some improvement - Here's what our member said… "My Windows XP took up to 30-45 seconds to shut down until I found this tweak and WOW! Please back up your registry before making any changes. Go to Start -> Run and type "regedit". Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control" click on the "Control" folder In the right window you will see this key "WaitToKillServiceTimeout" Double click that key and set it to a value lower than 2000. I set mine to 100 then Rebooted."

Note: The default is 20,000 not 2,000. I've set mine to 5000 (milliseconds) and noticed a snappier shutdown. Of coarse, as with all registry tweaks, backup the registry first and use at your own risk.

[HAL9000]

I would use a little caution with this tweak. I've had a few users try this and end up nuking their NTFS because the disk cache had not enough time to clear. Most of the time, they've been fixed by going to the recovery consol and typing in CHKDSK /F, but there have been a couple where a total format and reload was necessary.

[doctorgonzo]

If XP takes 30-45 seconds to shut down, I would look for reasons why that is before I used a tweak like that. XP shuts down immediately on my machine, except on rare occassions when SETI@Home hangs it up momentarily.