Automatically Close Unresponsive Applications at Shutdown

Have you ever come across a dialog box prompting you to either end an application now or wait for it to respond as you were shutting down your computer? This can be quite annoying, especially if you’re in a hurry. Well, you can now bypass this and do a Force Exit instead. In Force Exit, unresponsive applications are taken care of without user intervention.

You need to tweak your registry for this to work. Since this particular tweak is designed for Windows XP, you need to be on a Windows XP based machine. You also need to create a backup to be on the safe side. Registry changes are irreversible without a backup.

If your computer has multiple user accounts, you can do this tweak so that it will affect only an individual user or you can also do this so that all users will be affected. Choose the option that you think will work best for you.

For the Individual User:

  1. Click Start and go to Run. Enter regedit. Your registry editor will come up.
  2. Look for HKEY_CURRENT_USER at the left side of the registry editor. Expand this folder.
  3. Go to Control Panel and expand.
  4. Locate the Desktop folder.
  5. Look at the right side of the registry editor. You should be able to find AutoEndTasks. If you do, go on to step six. If you don’t, follow the steps below before proceeding to step six.
    • Right click on the right side pane of your registry editor.
    • Select New and then select String Value.
    • Rename the value to AutoEndTasks. You can also rename the new string value by right clicking on it and selecting Rename.
  6. Double click on AutoEndTasks. A new box will appear on your screen.
  7. Enter 1 if you would like AutoEndTasks enabled. If you would rather not, enter 0 to disable AutoEndTasks.
  8. Exit the registry and reboot.

If you’d like to share this convenience with other users on your machine, here are the instructions.

For All Users:

  1. Click Start and go to Run. Enter regedit. Your registry editor will come up.
  2. Go to HKEY_USERS found on the left side of the editor. Expand the folder by clicking on the cross icon found at the left.
  3. Now go to DEFAULT. Expand the folder and look for Control Panel.
  4. Expand Control Panel. Go to the Desktop folder.
  5. Look at the right side of the registry editor. Can you find AutoEndTasks? If you can, skip the instructions below and go directly to step six. If you can’t, follow these instructions.
    • Right click on the right side pane of the registry editor.
    • Select New and then select String Value.
    • Rename the new value AutoEndTasks. You can also right click on the new string value and select Rename.
  6. Double click AutoEndTasks. A new box will come up.
  7. Enter 0 in Value Data if you want AutoEndTasks disabled. If you want AutoEndTasks enabled, enter 1.
  8. Exit the registry and reboot.