Longer Shutdown in XP

[screwballl]

When you are only looking at a few seconds, I would not worry too much...
once it reaches over 40-60 seconds is when I would start to worry... I have the almost the same startup and shutdown times on both my AthlonXP 3000+ system and my E6600 system in my sig...

[TobyRama]

^Yeah I usually take the same approach unless I have that feeling the I really know what it is because over time it will usually "right itself" with normal driver updates other app updates -- the theory being that's it's usually an OS issue via a software issue (eg driver or other). I usually keep the same windows install for a long, long time only ghost when I absolutely have to or in a testing scenario (when I had two boxes now I only have one).

[Kent10]

It took some work but I found the culprit. First I tried this software and it works really well. Reduce Windows XP Shutdown Time I was able to narrow the problem down to services. And then I closed 1/2 the services and further narrowed it and finally found it was the "Automatic Updates" service. When this service is stopped my computer shuts down in about 8 seconds. With the service running it takes almost 30 seconds. Using the above mentioned software which adjusts the registry and setting everything to 2 seconds my computer now shuts down in about 9 seconds. I hope there are no problems with forcing a faster shutdown. Thanks again for all of your help. This was driving me nuts.

[onebxr]

I always have a slower time shutting down because of creative software for my X-Fi. Buggy POS.
-1

[drew and not u]

If you want it to shutdown superfast, you can enter these registry tweaks.

These reduce the time XP waits before automatically closing running programs when you give it the command to shutdown.

Go to Start then select Run
Type ‘Regedit’ and click ok
Find ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\’
Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
Now select ‘HungAppTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
Now find ‘HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop’
Select ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’
Now find ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Cur rentControlSet\Control\’
Select ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’
Right click and select ‘Modify’
Change the value to ‘1000′
Click ‘OK’

[Kent10]

Can anyone think of any danger to these super fast shutdowns?

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Kent10

Can anyone think of any danger to these super fast shutdowns?

Well those tweaks drew gave you could probably "harm" a service or application in a way that it won't let it finish what it's currently doing.
If you're running the automatic updates and you kill the service, you might have to start your updates over, since they didn't install or download properly. Others problem can likely arise, such as failed updates installations.

Take note though that those tweaks only apply to hung (not responding) applications and services, so those behaving normally would not be affected by this.

Alternatively, SuperFast Shutdown does a great job at closing the computer in a record time.

[drew and not u]

That's cool, but scarier than the registry tweaks!

Originally Posted by their site

Although it has never been reported, regular usage could possibly cause disk corruption.

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by drew and not u

That's cool, but scarier than the registry tweaks!

It's actually pretty much the thing with the registry tweak drew. By killing a task which is idling currently (but might continue if you give it some time) you can experience data corruption. Same when you end a process from the task manager, really.
It's not as if SuperFast Shutdown would actually seek information on your hard drive and delete it, at any rate. I've used it "many" times successfully in the past, now I simply don't close my computer. :P

[halutzparilla]

nah, just do the fresh reinstall every 6 months and save you some headaches in long run...