Speed up Windows Vista shutdown

After you have been using Windows Vista for a while, and installing a number of programs, you may find that it is taking longer for your computer to shutdown.  This is due to the fact that a lot of applications install services that run in the background, and the more of these that Windows Vista has to close, the slower your computer will perform, especially when shutting down. Whilst we have covered how to make Windows Vista run faster on our web site before, the time it takes to shutdown your PC is often overlooked.

To boost the speed in which your computer turns off, you can use a registry tweak to make Windows Vista close down the services faster.

To do this click Start and in the Start Search type in regedit. Once again I should warn you to be careful when working on your registry, as incorrectly editing it can result in your computer not working properly. Make sure you back up your registry before making any changes, and if you are not completely comfortable with changing your registry, it’s best to leave it alone, or ask someone who is comfortable editing registries to help you.

Always be careful when editing your registry.

In the registry editor, browse down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control.

On the right-hand side of the screen you should see a key called WaitToKillServiceTimeout with the value of 20000. This tells Windows Vista to wait 20000 milliseconds (20 seconds) for the service to stop after notifying the service that the system is shutting down. You can change this setting to 5000 (5 seconds), however you shouldn’t go any lower as you need to give the services time to shut down properly.