Automatically end tasks at shutdown
To speed up the shutdown of Windows XP you can set that all running applications are killed when Windows shuts down. To do this start the registry editor by clicking "Start" -> "Run..." and type "regedit".
Navigate to the directory labeled "HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop" and find "AutoEndTasks" in the right window. Change its value to 1.
If the 'AutoEndTasks' key does not exist, simply create it with a value of 1.