Colin's Weekly Tip: Quit Waiting for Windows to Crash

[Colin]

Because I usually have a lot of background programs running I find my computer can get to be really annoying - making me wait Windows to recognize an application which has crashed yet stays in memory. Luckily it's easy to decrease the time Windows waits for an application that has bit the bullet, before it gives you the option to close it.<BR>Load up regedit (Start -> Run -> regedit, then press the ok button) and follow this path. HKEY_CURRENT_USER - > Control Panel -> Desktop and inside there find the HungAppTimeout string value. The default value is 5000 milliseconds (5 seconds) and you can change that to whatever you'd like but please remember that any value you input is in milliseconds, myself I set that to 2000 ms (2 seconds).<BR><BR>Now Windows waits about 2 seconds before it gives me the option to end task that has crashed. Now if "they" would only find a way of stopping THAT from happening! <BR><BR>

[dumdum8684]

There are two other values in that location.

WaitToKillAppTimeout
and
AutoEndTask

The WaitToKillAppTimeout is refering to when you click the red X on a window and it stops responding. The value is how long, in milliseconds, windows will wait to popup the End Now dialog box.

The AutoEndTask can have the values of 0 (disabled) or 1 (enabled). If this value is 1 then you will not see the End Now dialog box and it will assume that you want to end the task. This applies for both of the Timeout values.

-Aaron