I recently found a fantastic article that listed some great ways of speeding up your Windows installation. Many of the fixes were registry edits and got a bit involved. For those people that probably shouldn't be messing around in the Windows registry, I have compiled all of the registry edits listed in the article into a reg file. All you have to do is execute the reg file below once and you can enjoy such benefits as faster folder access, improved boot times, faster menu loading as well as decreased shutdown time. Save the code below as a .reg file. Once you execute the reg file, reboot. After following those tips, my shutdown time went down to about 3 seconds!
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction]
"Enable"="Y to enable"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"MenuShowDelay"="100"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"WaitToKillAppTimeout"="1000"
"HungAppTimeout"="1000"
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
"WaitToKillAppTimeout"="1000"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="1000"