This is a pretty big pet peeve of mine: When trying to shut down the computer, I get message boxes telling me that a program is still running! I always close all programs before I shut down, but that doesn’t actually mean that the program has closed – some programs still run in the background!
This Registry Hack will automatically kill all programs that are running, either in the background or in the foreground, upon shutdown.
As always, please read this important information on editing the System Registry.
How To
- Hit the Windows Key+R, type regedit into the run dialog and hit OK.
- Now that you’re in the the Registry, navigate to this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
- Double click the AutoEndTasks key (in the right pane) and change the Value Data to
1 - Close the Registry and restart your machine to enable the change!
Now, when you shut down this computer, all programs will be killed and the computer shouldn’t be delayed!
omg that is soo annoying. i hate when i go to shut down my desktop, come back half an hour later and there’s that prompt telling me there’s a program still running! argh! thanks saman, i’m bookmarking this page for when i get home!
You are certainly welcome! This time should take care of that problem for you!
Thanks for the tip.
I was looking all over the Internet for this. 
Sweet! I like what I see on your site too!
Thanks!
Nice! I always get this one that has Chinese writing! I have no idea what it is, but it’s annoying nonetheless.
This freeware solves this problem too, provides even hotkeying or shortcuts for really fast shutdown.
http://www.ergoworx.net/fsd/index.html
Sounded nice to me as well and applied it.
But when I tried to save an image opened on my firefox browser using the right click menu, I had to wait longer than before. The destination folder window’s opening sequence got slower. Then I restored previous data (0) and the problem is solved.
I do not know whether it just happened to me but I would like to inform you about the situation.
This Registry Key has nothing to do with Firefox, this is a deep system level edit – Must have been a hiccup, but thanks for the info!
WOAH AWESOME! This place is so full of useful goodness. *BOWS*
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AutoEndTasks.reg:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
;Automatically kill all running programs at shutdown
;1 to enable 0 to disable
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"
I am will try this method to accelerate shutdown process , but say there’s something wrong how can I recover regestry ? (tweaking registry is risky right?)
thank you
I was wondering if this registry hack could be applied to Windows 95. I have machines running 95 that are set up to act as thinclients. Whenever the production staff goes to shutdown the machines, the batch file hangs because it loops automatically to prevent them from accessing the 95 enviroment. Any advice would be appreciated.
thank you….
Nice tricks my friend. Every computer needs a registry cleaner. Once I was trying to do stuff like that , at the end I found out that I destroyed the registry. It was full of errors so I got to fix it , I tried a registry cleaner that my friend recommended . the software is called regtidy and It cleaned the registry immediatly !