Reduce Windows XP's Shutdown Time

A friend of mine called me recently and asked for help. His Windows XP PC took a long time to shut down, and he had to wait a minute or more sometimes before the computer would finally shut down completely.
Since I was not able to visit him in the next time I told him about a software that might help him reduce the time it takes to shut down the Windows XP operating system.
Update: It may help when you shut down programs that are still running before you hit the shut down button on the system. If that does not help, a program like the following may prove useful.
The program is called Absolute Shutdown. It provides you with options to change the wait time before processes or services are killed on the system.
It displays the default timeout settings on first run which you can modify to speed up the shutdown process. The wait time refers to a grace period that Windows waits before it terminates a process or service. If you reduce the wait time, it will speed up the shutdown but may impact the shutdown of select programs on the system.
The wait time was set to 20 seconds for application timeouts and 35 seconds for hung applications. The difference between the two is that hung applications don't respond when queried.
I told him to reduce the setting to two seconds which should be more than enough and quit every important application before shutting down the computer. You can reduce this even further if you do not experience issues but it won't make a huge difference in this case.
The settings become valid after a restart of the computer. What can I say, he told me that his computer is now shutting down a lot faster than before. The software can be run from any location without installing it first. I suggest you keep it for a while to see if the new settings are not interfering with important processes or services on your computer.
If you do experience problems you should increase the shutdown timeout again to resolve those. Users who do not want to use a program can change the shutdown timeouts in the Registry.
The first two settings can be found under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. They are called HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout. You should also set the key AutoEndTasks to 1 if it is not set to this value already.
The timeout settings for Services can be found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control and it is called WaitToKillServiceTimeout. The value is entered in miliseconds which means that the value 2000 needs to be entered if you want to set this to 2 seconds.
To open the Registry hit the Windows-key, type regedit and hit enter on your keyboard. If the keys are not listed in the Registry, create them using the right-click context menu.
Update: These settings apply to newer versions of Windows as well. Absolute Shutdown is no longer available on the Internet. We have uploaded the latest version of the program to our own server. Please note that we don't support it in any way and suggest you use the manual Registry editing method instead. Click on the following link to download the program to your system: AbsoluteShutdown.zip
What mental age of reader are you targeting with the first sentence? 10?
Why not write an article on how to *avoid* upgrading from W10 to W11. Analogous to those like me who avoided upgrading from 7 to 10 for as long as possible.
If your paymaster Microsoft permits it, of course.
5. Rufus
6. Ventoy
PS. I hate reading these “SEO optimized” articles.
I used Rufus to create an installer for a 6th gen intel i5 that had MBR. It upgraded using Setup. No issues except for Win 11 always prompting me to replace my local account. Still using Win 10 Pro on all my other PCs to avoid the bullying.
bit pointless to upgrade for the sake of upgrading as you never know when you’ll get locked out because ms might suddenly not provide updates to unsupported systems.
ps…. time travelling?
written. Jan 15, 2023
Updated • Jan 13, 2023
This happens when you schedule a post in WordPress and update it before setting the publication date.
Anyone willing to downgrade to this awful OS must like inflicting themselves with harm.
I have become convinced now that anybody who has no qualms with using Windows 11/10 must fit into one of the following brackets:
1) Too young to remember a time before W10 and W11 (doesn’t know better)
2) Wants to play the latest games on their PC above anything else (or deeply needs some software which already dropped W7 support)
3) Doesn’t know too much about how computers work, worried that they’d be absolutely lost and in trouble without the “”latest security””
4) Microsoft apologist that tries to justify that the latest “features” and “changes” are actually a good thing, that improve Windows
5) Uses their computer to do a bare minimum of like 3 different things, browse web, check emails, etc, so really doesn’t fuss
Obviously that doesn’t cover everyone, there’s also the category that:
6) Actually liked W7 more than 10, and held out as long as possible before switching, begrudgingly uses 10 now
Have I missed any group off this list?
You have missed in this group just about any professional user that uses business software like CAD programs or ERP Programs which are 99% of all professional users from this list.
Linux doesn’t help anyone who is not a linux kid and apple is just a fancy facebook machine.
Microsoft has removed KB5029351 update
only from windows update though
KB5029351 is still available from the ms update catalog site
1. This update is labaled as PREVIEW if it causes issues to unintelligent people, then they shouldn’t have allowed Preview updates ot install.
2. I have installed it in a 11 years old computer, and no problems at all.
3. Making a big drama over a bluescreen for an updated labeled as preview is ridiculous.
This is probably another BS internet drama where people ran programs and scripts that modified the registry until they broke Windows, just for removing stuff that they weren’t even using just for the sake of it.
Maybe people should stop playing geeks and actually either use Windows 10 or Windows 11, but don’t try to modify things just for the sake of it.
Sometimes removing or stopping things (like defender is a perfect example) only need intelligence, not scripts or 3rd party programs that might mess with windows.
Windows 11 was a pointless release, it was just created because some of the Windows team wanted to boost sales with some sort of new and improved Windows 10. Instead, Microsoft cannot support one version well let alone two.
Windows 11 is the worst ugly shame by Microsoft ever. They should release with every new W11 version a complete free version of Starallback inside just to make this sh** OS functionally again.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released a statement regarding the “unsupported processor” blue screen error for their boards using Intel 600/700 series chipsets & to avoid the KB5029351 Win11 update:
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSI-On–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–Error-Message-of-Windows-11-Update-KB5029351-Preview-142215
check out the following recent articles:
Neowin – Microsoft puts little blame on its Windows update after UNSUPPORTED PROCESSOR BSOD bug:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-puts-little-blame-on-its-windows-update-after-unsupported-processor-bsod-bug/
BleepingComputer – Microsoft blames ‘unsupported processor’ blue screens on OEM vendors:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-blames-unsupported-processor-blue-screens-on-oem-vendors/
While there may be changes or updates to the Windows 10 Store for Business and Education in the future, it is premature to conclude that it will be discontinued based solely on rumors.
My advice, I left win 15 years ago. Now I’m a happy linux user (linuxmint) but there is Centos, Fedora, Ubuntu depending on your needs.
motherboard maker MSI has recently released new BIOS/firmware updates for their Intel 600 & 700 series motherboards to fix the “UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR” problem (Sept. 6):
https://www.msi.com/news/detail/Updated-BIOS-fixes-Error-Message–UNSUPPORTED-PROCESSOR–caused-BSOD-on-MSI-s-Intel-700-and-600-Series-Motherboards-142277
I try to disable the Diagnostics Tracking Service (Connected Devices Platform User Services) but it wont let me disable it, any help will be greatly appreciated.
Tank you for your help