HOW TO REDUCE THE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN TIME

THE PROCESS TO REDUCE THE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN TIME

When you hit the Turn Off button, a message is sent to all programs running on your XP system to shutdown. The default time to allow applications to shutdown is 20 seconds. To reduce this time to say 5 seconds, in the Registry Editor navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Here, double-click on the value “WaitToKillAppTime” and change its default value 20000 to 5000 and select the OK button.

If you want to change the shutdown time to 1 second then reduce the value to 1000. This is the minimum time for shutdown

source : http://systemmechanic12.blogspot.com