Windows Shutdown Speed

I'm over at a friend's house, who has just installed some software so we can
edit some video files, and I suggest he restarts so that all the codex's are
in the registry. He leans over and turns the power off, and at my raised eyebrow
says "It never shuts down when I ask it to, so I just turn the power off".

There are so many things wrong with that logic I'm not even sure where to start,
but if you are in the same boat as my friend then this article is for you.

Why shutdown Windows, instead of just powering off, what's the difference? Several
important items are different. During the course of using your computer, Windows
sometimes postpones writing data to the disk to improve performance. This is
called write caching, and as a consequence, Windows must take a few seconds
before you shut down to make sure all data queued to be written is actually,
physically written to the disk before power is lost. If this isn't allowed to
happen, over the course of a few days, or weeks you are going to build up quite
a clutter of files that are not complete. Errors will start happening. Also,
your registry will begin to get cluttered with duplicate and incomplete entries
as well. When this starts happening, Windows is going to start freezing up.
So you really want to be able to shut down Windows and restart your computer.

The tips I'm going to give you here are designed to improve the Windows shut down speed.
Theoretically, when you shut down Windows, your computer should be powered down
in less than fifteen seconds. The problem is that all of the cleanup required
before Windows considers it "safe" to power off can sometimes delay
the Windows shutdown. This will include; shutting down your open applications, stopping
any running services, and writing any pending cache data to the disk.

It may be that your computer has deteriorated to the point that it no longer
shuts down. Try out these tips and see if they help. If they don't, then click
over to our forum area and maybe we can help you out until you can get a clean
reboot. No guarantees, sometimes straw can not be gold, but we will give it
a try.

Note: This first tip talks about editing the Registry. Many Techs don't like
me talking about editing the Registry, and there is a good reason for that;
because when you mess something up in there, its messed up good. So, don't explore
or mess around or get a little crazy with changes in there. If you follow the
directions your computer will be fine, if you don't, then hopefully you followed
the first direction and that is to back up your registry before you make changes.

When shutting down, Windows attempts to stop all running tasks. If a task is
not responding or refuses to shut down, there's a built-in delay before Windows
will force the task to end. This delay is called the timeout, and it can be
shortened if you're experiencing problems or unreasonable delays when shutting
down your system.

The default delay is 20 seconds. That would be fine if it shut everything down
after the first 20 seconds, unfortunately that is 20 per stalled program. If
you have any malware, spyware, virus scan, desktop program (Like a desktop utility
bar that comes with some Internet access services), ... that 20 seconds can
turn into 5 or 6 minutes. The next tip is to get rid of many of those programs
that can stall out, but what we are going to do here is shorten the default
delays down to 2 seconds per program or service.

To do this we are going to use the utility RegEdit. To start that program to
go Start->Run and type in regedit, then click the Ok button. The registry
has several branches and directory trees. Follow the directions and change what
it suggested only. If you are not comfortable doing this, then stop, exit the
program and let someone more familiar with Windows edit this for you.

1. Back up your current registry. Go to File->Export save as today's date.
It is best to save these files at the C:\ root directory, so you can get to
them, or in the My Documents file area.

2. Expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.

3. Double-click the WaitToKillAppTimeout value. This number controls the time
to wait, in milliseconds, before unresponsive applications are forced to close.
The default is 20000 (twenty seconds), but it can be decreased to any value;
the minimum is 1 millisecond, although it's impractical to use any value smaller
than about 2000 (two seconds) here.

4. In this same key is the HungAppTimeout value, which does pretty much the
same thing as WaitToKillAppTimeout; double click this and enter 2000 here as
well.

5. Expand the branches to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l.

6. Double-click the WaitToKillServiceTimeout value. This works the same as
the WaitToKillAppTimeout value, except that it applies to services instead of
applications. Set this to 2000 as well.

7. Close the Registry Editor when you're done. You'll have to restart Windows
for the change to take effect.

These values also affect the timeouts at times other than just shutting down,
such as when you click End Process in the Windows Task Manager.

Now, there are several reasons for a long delay. I have my system tuned for
speed, but the fastest shut down I get is about 1 minute. The reason for this
is I run Apache and MySQL servers on my system, and those take a bit to close
up and save files. The only way I'm going to get a faster time is by not using
those services, which I'm not willing to do.

Other reasons are spyware and malware. There are several programs out there
to search and remove these horrible little creatures. Ad-aware for example is
a great program to start with. You can get he latest copy of Ad-aware for free
from Lavasoft (http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/).
It is free and a great utility to clean up 90% of these malware and spyware
programs. Our Help Forum has many other suggestions for digging out the other
10%, so stop in there and find out more.

Keep programs you don't need from starting up in the background. Go to Start->Programs->Start
Up and look at the list there. Anything you don't need, delete it, but right
clicking on the name and selecting Delete. I delete everything from this folder
on a system that is giving me trouble, and then if a program really does need
to be activated at start up then I put it back.

Some virus protection programs are a real pain. Norton for example, or Macfee,
can slow down a computer during operation, and keep it from shutting down in
a timely manner. I suggest uninstalling these and using AVG from Grisoft (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1),
which in my experience (and everyone I've ever talked to about it) is a much
nicer program to work with.

Not being able to restart or shut down your computer can cause unexpected problems
in several areas. Many of the problems that keep you from being able to shut
down Windows will also keep your computer from running at its top speed. These tips
should help you get your computer back in order, but if you need more help,
be sure to check in with our experts in the Help Forum.