Speed up Windows 7 shutdown

At least in our early experiments with Windows 7, we’ve had no complaints about general speed for most basic Windows tasks. That said, there’s always room for improvement, and one of the areas in which some users will wish for some is in the shutdown and restart process. Especially if you do a lot of software installs and uninstalls, waiting for Windows to shut down in an orderly fashion can leave you tapping your fingernails on your desk for precious seconds. 

There’s not a lot you can do about startup times, but shutdown is, to an extent, governed by settings in the Windows Registry. Tweaking these can accelerate shutdown a bit. As always, proceed with caution where the Windows Registry is concerned. Before you start tweaking, back up your data files, and, for safety’s sake, back up your Registry, too. (You can do this via the regedit command: Type regedit in the Start menu search box, then choose File > Export from the resulting Registry Editor window. Make sure All is selected under Export range.)

All set? In the Start menu, type regedit into the search box and hit Enter. You’ll launch the Registry Editor, if you’re not already there from your Registry backup. Proceed with caution! All changes take effect in realtime, so here’s not the place to experiment. Don’t poke around in places in the Registry if you’re not 100 percent sure what you’re doing.

In the left pane, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control. One of the options that should pop up in the right pane once you’re there is called WaitToKillServiceTimeout. You’ll want to change a value in this Registry entry, so right-click on it and choose Modify. You'll get an Edit String box:

 
The default value you see may vary; on a Windows 7 desktop and laptop we tried this with, we saw a value of 12,000 (that’s in milliseconds); on a Vista laptop, we saw 20,000. We suggest changing it to 10,000, for starters. We definitely wouldn’t get too aggressive (i.e., don’t try “0” if you value stability), but work your way down slowly.
And that’s it! Next time you restart and then shut down, you should see the faster result.