Scroll past the Microsoft section and you may find programs like Quicktime, Java and AcroTray (Adobe Acrobat). To stop one from loading, select it and click Disable. If the button is greyed out, try clicking Showfor all users first.

Your shutdown sequence will run more quickly if you ensure all programs are closed first. If you then hit Alt and F4, you’ll see the shutdown dialogue.

CLEAN COMPUTER Free tool CCleaner can help achieve a pristine machine (www.ccleaner.com)

It’s also a good idea to properly shut down any external hardware before you shut down your computer. This is especially true for external hard drives or printers, which may be transferring data. You’ll find an icon in your system tray called Safely Remove Hardware. Click it for a list of connected devices. If you see any SCSI devices listed, though, leave them running. They’re probably internal drives.

Sometimes programs develop faults, with corrupt configuration or driver errors, that can cause your PC to hang at shutdown. Use the Reliability Monitor to identify them. Type ‘Reliability’ into Start Search to find it, then click Reliability Monitor. There you can find a list of programs and hardware that have had issues running on your system, such as applications that hang when you switch off your machine. To fix troublesome programs, try the ‘Problem Reports and Solutions’ centre – it’s in the System and Maintenance section of the Control Panel – where you’ll find recent advice on fixing known program issues direct from Microsoft.

Faster shutdown

Close all your open programs with a just a few clicks

1 LAUNCH THE TASK MANAGER You can shut down running programs by right clicking their entries on the task bar and choosing Close – but here’s a power tip that comes in very handy. First, hit Ctrl and Shift and Esc to open the Task Manager.

2 SELECT ALL APPLICATIONS The Task Manager monitors running applications, processes and more. With the Applications tab active, click the top item in the list then Shift-click the bottom item in the list. This selects all running applications.

3 END TASKS Now all you have to do to shut down all running programs is click End Task. You may be prompted to save data if any of them have open documents. Once all programs are closed, you should be able to shut down in seconds.

Faster start-up

Rid your machine of superfl uous extras and cut vital seconds from your start-up time

1 CONTROL PANEL TWEAKS Deleting applications you don’t need can help accelerate boot times – especially those that load into memory when you log in. Go to the Control Panel and choose Uninstall a Program.

2 DELETING PROGRAMS To delete a program, select it from the list and click Uninstall. Some may prompt you to restart. Wait until you’ve removed all programs you want to delete before rebooting your PC.

3 BE FRUGAL WITH FONTS When Windows Vista starts up, it loads all your fonts into memory. The more you have, the longer this takes. It’s likely that you’ll only use a fraction of them – so you can safely remove those you don’t like.

4 IN THE BIN Go to Control Panel > Appearance and Personalisation. Click Install or Remove a Font. You’ll see a list of installed fonts in Windows Explorer. Double click on a font to preview it. To delete a font, just drag it to the Recycle Bin.

5 ADJUST VISUAL EFFECTS One last quick but rather drastic fix to speed up your system. Go to Performance Information and Tools in the System Maintenance section of the Control Panel and click Adjust Visual Effects. Tick Adjust for Best Performance to turn off animations and transparency.

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