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.

Make use of multiple flash drives or cards for a speed boost

One of the celebrated upgrades in Windows Vista was ReadyBoost, a handy technology that lets you make use of a USB flash drive or flash-memory card (such as an SD card) to serve as extra fast-access cache memory for frequently used files and data. (In essence, it serves the same purpose as cache on your hard drive, but the fact that solid-state memory is being used is a speed plus.) When you plugged in a USB key or flash card, you would be prompted whether you wanted to use it as storage, or as a supplement to speed up your PC.

The introduction of ReadyBoost coincided with the precipitous fall in price of flash media. With 4GB flash drives selling now for well under $20, most users own at least a few of these handy devices in various capacities. Why let yours sit idle when they’re not being used to store or transport files?

Windows 7 retains the ReadyBoost feature but adds support for multiple USB keys or flash cards used at once. So, if you have a few old 1GB keys around gathering dust, it can’t hurt to plug them in, so long as you have the USB ports to spare. When you plug in a key, Windows 7 will bring up a prompt asking whether you want to open the drive in Windows Explorer or use the drive to speed up your system. Choose the latter:

In the following screen, choose the Use this device radio button and adjust the memory slider below it to the amount you want to dedicate to ReadyBoost:

This won’t change the drive in any fundamental way; you can always unplug it and redeploy it for normal storage down the road, or use the unallocated portion for storage in parallel with ReadyBoost. Note, though, that the file system, even with 64-bit Windows 7, will keep you from accessing more than 4GB of the memory per key or card. So don’t expect to bulk up on cheap 8GB keys and go wild.