How to Speed Up Shutdowns on Your Computer Part III

Submitted by Gil on July 15, 2006 - 9:47am.

Optimize Windows XP

The following instructions will allow your computer to shut down much faster. This specific change tells the operating system to shut down the services on your computer at faster rate; instead of shutting down at the default 20,000 ms, your computer will be shutting down those services in 1,000 ms, after applying this change you should see a significant difference in the amount of time it takes to shutdown your PC. Below you'll find some simple steps to speed up your computers shut down time. This is Part III of a couple of tips aimed at speeding up your PC's shutdown time. As always comments/suggestions are welcome.

1. These tweaks require that you venture into your registry, please backup your registry.

2. Go to Start > Run when the Run box opens type in regedit

3. Your registry should have opened [Just checking...have you backed up your registry?] Navigate to the following keys; HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > System > CurrentControlSet > Control

4. When you get to Control click on it, the pane to the right should have a listing of several keys, double-click on;

>WaitToKillServiceTimeout, change it to '1000' (changing this forces your computer during shutdown to end services that are running much faster)

5. Once you 've changed these settings restart your computer and your settings should have taken effect.