There have been time when I have to wait for atleast 5 minutes for my PC to shut Down so that I could pull the Power Strip. But not anymore. It now takes me at the most 3 second to shut it down. It depends a lot on the System resources and the number of software you have installed on your PC. But here I am not going to tell you to upgrade your PC, buy more RAM or even uninstall all those unnecessary programs. What I am going to show you is a simple trick using which you can Shut down your PC in under 5 seconds.

For Windows 2000 and XP users:

For all those Windows users who still have Windows 2000 or windows XP installed on their computers, you will need to download a software called User Profile Hive Cleanup Service. This software is developed by Microsoft and it completely terminates all the user sessions when a user logs off. Sometime System processes and applications maintain connections to registry keys in the user profile after a user logs off which eventually delays the Shut Down process. This software reduces those delays, making the system shut down quickly. There is also a software, Quick ShutDown which gives you the ability to quickly shutdown, reboot, hibernate, logoff, standby or lock your computer with a single mouse click. It has an ability of instantly terminating programs that aren’t responding and thus helps in quick shut down.

For Windows Vista user:

To decrease the shut down time in Windows Vista, you will need to tweak your Registry entries (I mean! aaa… Your Computer’s). It is advisable to first create a back up of your of your computer’s Registry.

• Go to start menu.
• Type regedit and hit enter
• Go to ‘File menu’ and select ‘Export’.
• Enter a File Name and Click ‘Save’.

After making a backup of our Registry we can now Edit the required Registry Entries.

• Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER >> Control Panel >> Desktop

You will see WaitToKillAppTimeout on the right pane of the window. Double Click it and change the value to anything between 1000 and 2000. Remember the more less the number, the less time it will take to shut down your PC. When you have completed doing this, click OK.

Thats all. Your PC should now Shut down quickly as ever. If you would like to add something I have missed, let me know in the comments below.