It gets on one’s nerve when you have to wait for minutes for XP to shutdown, when it takes lesser time for a boot.

The reason that the shutdown times increase over the days is due to the services and applications that keep increasing as you install new software. Windows waits for each service to terminate and only then does it shutdown.

Here are some simple registry tweaks that will reduce the shutdown time of your PC running XP considerably.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]

“HungAppTimeout”=”200″   (ms)
“WaitToKillAppTimeout”=”200″ (ms)
“AutoEndTasks”=”1″ (Yes)

Run kill_app.reg

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]

“WaitToKillServiceTimeout”=”200″  (ms)

Run kill_service.reg

Another way for a quick shutdown is to make a shortcut to “shutdown -s -t 0″. Make a shortcut or a batch file and place it in your desktop. Since this eliminates the need to bring up that fancy “Turn Off Computer” dialog, it saves some time there too.