Speed Up Your Shut Down In XP Tired of waiting while your shuts down? Now no more wait, thanks to this cool trick.
The trick is in two parts. Follow both of them for best results.

Part~11. Open the Registry Editor (Start >> Run >> type regedit).
2. Navigate to H_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control
3. Click on the "Control" Folder.
4. Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout".
5. Right click on it, select modify and set it a value lower than 2000 (the lesser the faster, but remember don't set it less than 100 to be on the safer side).
Part~2Like previous versions of , it takes long time to restart or shutdown XP when the "Exit " sound is enabled. To solve this problem you must disable this useless sound. Follow these steps to disable this sound.

1. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices.
2. Click on the Sounds tab, then under program events and menu find and select the "Exit " option.
3. Now there will be several sounds to choose from. Choose "(None)" and then click on Apply and then OK.

Yippee!! it's done now. You will see some improvement when shutting down your system. :)