There is one quick edit to the registry that can make Windows XP or Vista shut down quicker:
1. At the Start Menu, type "regedit" without the quotes in the search box and hit Enter.
2. Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control and go to the Control folder
3. Right click the entry "WaitToKillServiceTimeout”
4. Set the value to something lower, 1000 is usually good (the numbers represent milliseconds).
The default value is a (too) generous 20000. However, the cost with this is that it won’t give running programs much time to save data so losing work using the tweak is a definite possibility. Any risk which may occur doe to the result of the change is your resposibility. So backup the registry before make any change.
