Reader Eric writes in with a tip to eliminate hangs and speed up the shutdown process in Windows without installing any extra software.
Whenever I tried to shutdown my work laptop it would take almost five minutes. Five minutes! Since I work in a completely locked-down environment I couldn’t look to any third party applications for help. Entering the following shutdown command in the run dialog speeds up my shutdown time dramatically.
shutdown -f -t 0The command Eric uses immediately forces any open applications to close without warning prior to Windows shutting down. Here’s another way to quickly shutdown your Windows computer. Thanks, Eric!
[Via Lifehacker]
I’ll have to try this little tip out on my system. Vista takes forever to shut down. Maybe I can make a shutdown icon for it!!
Reader Eric writes in with a tip to eliminate hangs and speed up the shutdown process in Windows without installing any extra software.
Windows only: Freeware application CoolMon monitors your systems vitals with attractive desktop-embedded widgets. In very basic operation, CoolMon displays information like RAM usage, hard drive space, and CPU load, but with the right plugins you can embed just about anything on your desktop—like new email alerts, weather, the song you’re currently listening to, and so on. If all you’re looking for is more of a plain-text to-do list on your desktop, check out 
Windows only: Sick of your Windows screensaver coming on in the middle of watching a video or referring to what’s on-screen? Tech site the How-To Geek set up a shortcut to temporarily disable the screensaver (without having to click your way to its settings by hand) using a small utility called FlipSS. Mac users, you can get this same functionality with