Close running programs faster when shutting down the machine (XP & Vista)

If Windows cannot end a running task when shutting down, it requests the user to do so. This query is redundant in most cases and is not really required since you want to end the respective task anyway. Go to ‘Start | Run...’, type ‘regedit’ and click ‘OK’. Vista users can directly enter the command in the search line of the Start menu and press [Enter]. Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop’ key. The ‘AutoEndTasks’ value is given towards the right side of the window. If it is not given, create it by selecting ‘Edit | New | Character string’ and name the entry ‘AutoEndTasks’. Open it and enter the ‘Value Data’ as ‘1’. Click on ‘OK’ and restart the system. This setting exclusively suppresses the operating system's query if it cannot end a task while shutting down. It does not reduce the time for which Windows waits until the task ends and thus does not really accelerate the process of system shutdown. Note: To reactivate the query, enter ‘0’ in the ‘AutoEndTasks’ string in the registry or delete the entry. For reducing the waiting time to kill tasks go to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\ SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Control’ key and search for the ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’ entry. Enter the desired value here in milliseconds. So a value of ‘1000’ is equal to 1 second.