Make Windows Vista Shut Down Services Quicker

The more applications that you install into Windows, the longer the computer takes to shut down. This is especially true for applications that install a service that runs when the computer starts, and even more true for services that refuse to shut down quickly, or time out when being shut down.

To change Windows to shut down the services quicker, open the registry editor, and browse down to the following key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

You should see a key in the right-hand window called “WaitToKillServiceTimeout”, with a default value of 20000, which represents 20000 milliseconds, or 20 seconds. You can change this to a value of 5000 for 5 seconds.

You won’t want to make this value much less than 5 seconds.