A couple of months ago, I was in a rush to shut down my laptop. When I finally got to my destination, I found that my computer had not in fact shut down as I had told it to do. Apparently a program had crashed and it was waiting on me to click the ‘End Now’ button. I was so annoyed that from then on I waited to see that my power light had gone out before I ever put my laptop in my bag.

But now, I have found a better solution: Force my computer to close unresponsive programs at shutdown without my permission. I’m shutting my computer down any way, who cares if it’s closing an unresponsive program. Here’s how to so it:

Step 1: Click the Start button, then click Run. Type in regedit into the run box that opens.

Step 2: Navigate (on the left side) to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Step 3: Make sure to click on the Desktop folder on the left side. Next, find AutoEndTasks on the right.

Step 4: Right click on AutoEndTasks, click Modify and in the ‘Value Data’ box, type 1. Then click OK. Close the registry Editor.

Step 5: You will probably have to restart for the changes to take effect. So you may have to end some crashed programs just one last time.