Automatically Close Frozen Programs
Okay, so worse things happen at sea, but don’t you just hate it when you shut down your XP Computer, only to be confronted with error message boxes telling you that ‘This Program has stopped Responding’ and asking daft questions like what do you want to do about it?
This Top Tip from Propellerhead, known as a Forced Exit, gets rid of those irritating messages and force unresponsive programs to close automatically. However, it is for Experts only because it involves tinkering with the Registry, and if you try it you do so entirely at your own risk. Actually it’s quite safe and very easy so assuming that you know what you are doing, have set a new Restore Point or backed up the Registry, proceed to Run on the Start menu.
Type ‘regedit’ (sans quotes) to open the Registry Editor. Work your way to HKEY_USERSDefaultControl PanelDesktop, double click Desktop to open in the right hand pane and look for ‘AutoEndTasks’. Double-click the key and change the Value Data from 0 to 1, Exit the Registry Editor and the change should be applied the next time you start Windows. You can undo the change by switching the Value Data back to 0 in the very unlikely event you run into problems.
By the way, the same key also contains a control that determines how long Windows waits before declaring a program as unresponsive. ‘WaitToKillApp’ sets the timeout delay in milliseconds (the default is 2000, or 20 seconds) and you can change this setting to speed things up a bit. Okay, you know the drill by now, if you want to see hundreds more great tips like this one hurry over to PCTopTips
