We all know that connecting power to your computer has to be the fastest, but not the best, way to shut down your computer. In this 5-step tutorial, we’ll show you how to make your shutdown as fast as possible.

Step 1 – Stop as many services as possible.

The more that is running on your computer, the more your computer will have to shut down on shutdown. Keeping a computer running thinner will not only make your computer run faster, it will also cause Windows to shut down faster. This is how you do it:

Go to the Start menu, and then select Run.

Type ‘services.msc’ in the Run dialog box and click OK.

In the services window, double-click the service you want to disable.

In the selected service properties box, choose disabled from the Startup type drop-down box.

Click OK.

It’s best to restart your computer after disabling a couple of services at a time, so that if something unwanted happens to your computer, you know which disabled service needs to be re-enabled.

Step 2 – Automatically kill tasks on shutdown.

Windows XP by default will ask if you want to end a process if an application is running during the shutdown process. This small registry change will tell Windows to automatically end the process without your confirmation.

Go to the Start menu, and then select Run.

In the Run box, type ‘regedit’ and click OK.

Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop’ and double click on ‘AutoEndTasks’.

Change the value to 1 and click OK.

Step 3 – Reduce the waiting time to kill open apps.

When you choose to shut down your computer, Windows will automatically wait a while before killing any applications that are open. Here we will show you how to reduce the waiting time.

Go to the Start menu, and then select Run.

In the Run box, type ‘regedit’ and click OK.

Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop’ and double click on ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’. Change the value to 1000 and click OK.

Double click on ‘HungAppTimeout’ and change the value to 1000 and then click OK.

Navigate to ‘HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTControl PanelDesktop’ and double click ‘WaitToKillAppTimeout’. Change the value to 1000 and click OK.

Double click on ‘HungAppTimeout’ and change the value to 1000 and then click OK.

Step 4: Reduce the wait time for services to shut down.

Like applications, Windows XP waits a bit for services to shut down before starting to kill them. Here’s how to reduce the waiting time.

Go to the Start menu, and then select Run.

In the Run box, type ‘regedit’ and click OK.

Navigate to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControl’.

Double click on ‘WaitToKillServiceTimeout’ and change the value to 1000 and then click OK.

Step 5: ONE Click Shutdown

More mouse clicks equals more time. That’s right, why go to Start and then click Shut down and select Shut down? Seems like too much work to me. Here is a tutorial on how to make a shutdown shortcut on your desktop.

Right click on your desktop and select new and then shortcut.

You will now see the New Shortcut wizard. Under the location of this item, type ‘SHUTDOWN -s -t 01’ and then click Next.

Give the shortcut a name, I like Shutdown. Then click Finish.

Just as a quick note, you can do the same for a quick reboot, just enter ‘SHUTDOWN -r -t 01’ as the location and then you’re good to go.