How to Speed Up Shutdowns on Your Computer Part III

View Tutorial 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.

Article posted on 07 15th, 2006

Related & Suggested Posts

  1. How to Speed Up Shutdowns on Your Computer Part I
  2. How to Speed Up Shutdowns on Your Computer Part II
  3. How to Speed Up Applications in Windows XP
  4. How to Make Your Start Menu Load Faster
  5. How to Speed Up Internet Browsing With Windows Vista


Leave a Comment

Note: I discourage users from using keywords in their names when posting comments, most of those are caught as spam and end up being deleted. It would be more productive and interactive if commentators use the name they go by rather than using an unrelated name. In the future I reserve the right to delete comments from users using a name other than their own.

Connect with Gil via
Connect with Gil
Facebook | Twitter | Digg | SU | LinkedIn
Who's behind Gil's Method?
My Name is Gilberto J Perera and I'm the editor behind Gil's Method. I started this blog to help relatives with computer questions. Since then the blog has grown to the collection of articles you see today, I hope that you find this blog useful and that you come back again.
Read more at my about page
Other Resources

Books (Coming Soon)

Forum (Coming Soon)

Store (Coming Soon)