Automatically Close Programs at Shutdown

When you shut down Windows, if you have any programs running you’ll get a message box
warning you that a program is still running. Then you have to close the program and tell Windows
again to shut down. It’s a fairly pointless warning—better yet would be if Windows automatically
killed the programs without issuing the warning. That way, you wouldn’t get error messages and
wouldn’t have to close each individual application before shutting down your computer. Beware,
though; if you forcibly close an application that has unsaved changes (such as a word processor),
you’ll lose all your work.
To have Windows automatically close programs at shutdown, run the Registry Editor, and go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Edit the AutoEndTasks key so that is has a value of 1. If
the key doesn’t exist, create it as a DWORD value and give it the value of 1. To disable it, either delete
the key, or set the value to 0.