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You could hard-boil an egg in the time it takes some Windows XP systems to shut down. If your PC doesn't know how to say good night, Gracie, try these tips.

Don't Shut Down, Hibernate

There are only two reasons to shut down Windows: to save electricity, and to reset the operating system when it starts acting goofy. If nothing really bad is happening and the stars have aligned correctly, XP can run reliably for days or even weeks between boots. So instead of shutting down your system, tell it to go to sleep.

Putting Windows into Hibernate mode copies the contents of your machine's RAM to your hard disk, then powers everything down, which saves just as much electricity as shutting it down--from the hardware point of view, the two actions are identical. Hibernating XP and waking it out of hibernation take much less time than closing it and rebooting. For more information, read the "Enable Hibernation" section in my September 2002 Answer Line.

Close Programs First

Windows must close every running program before it can shut itself down, which is time consuming. Of course, you could close each program manually beforehand to speed up the shutdown--but unless Windows seems to take forever to close, that won't save you much time.

However, if your shutdowns are unusually slow, you could try closing your running programs (both your applications and your system tray icons) prior to turning Windows off. If your system shuts down more quickly, one of those programs is causing the hang-up.

Watch Out for Bad Drivers

Buggy or improperly installed drivers can also cause shutdown difficulties. Check to see if your device drivers need updates by right-clicking My Computer and selecting Properties, Hardware, Device Manager. Look for entries with yellow question marks or red exclamation points: A question mark indicates that Windows is using a generic driver for that device instead of one designed for it, and an exclamation point means that the device is not working.

The drivers for graphics boards, sound cards, and printers are most likely to need an update. Visit the vendors' Web sites to download the updated drivers to your PC. Then right-click the entry in Device Manager, choose Update Driver, and step through the wizard, selecting "No, not this time" to the Windows Update question, and choosing the "specified location" option when it appears. When you're able to navigate to the driver file, select it and click OK to install it. When you finish updating your drivers, close all open windows.

Terminate Terminal Services

Windows XP's Terminal Services can also cause recalcitrant shutdowns. That's more, if you never use remote desktop, fast user switching, remote assistance, the terminal server, or other Terminal Services, you don't need them. To shut it off, select Start, Run, type services.msc /s, and press Enter. Find and double-click the Terminal Services listing. (Of course, if you don't have Terminal Services installed, your slow shutdowns have another cause.) Change "Startup type" to Disabled or Manual and click OK.

Don't Clear Virtual Memory

If you use Windows XP Pro (but not the Home edition, alas), you can speed up your shutdowns by verifying that you're not clearing your virtual memory whenever you exit Windows. Select Start, Run, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate to Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options in the left pane. In the right pane, scroll to Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile. If the option is enabled, double-click it, select Disabled, and click OK. (You may not have this option on your system.)

Reduce Windows' Wait Time

You can speed up some shutdowns--and risk losing unsaved data--by reducing the time Windows waits for a program to stop itself properly before taking this job into its own disruptive hands. But first, save a restore point as described in the third option in Scott Dunn's "No-Brainer Backups Using Windows' Own Tools." Then select Start, Run, type regedit, and press Enter. In the left pane navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control. Double-click the WaitToKillServiceTimeout item in the right pane. Set it to a value lower than the default 2000 (or 2 seconds), perhaps to 1000 (1 second). Click OK, and then reboot.