Sometimes an application will “hang” and stop working. In Ubuntu Linux, there’s a feature called. With this feature, the not responding application will quit within clicks. In Windows, to quit a not responding application, you will have to go to the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del) to “End Task”.

Sometimes, it takes even longer time than expected to end a not responding application, which is really very annoying. Now, you can make the not responding application end itself automatically (in Windows XP) by editting the Windows registry.

This requires you to be extremely careful because you need to edit the Windows registry. Before doing that, make sure you backup your Windows Registry and go to the Registry Editor.

Go to Start > Run and type regedit.

On the left panel, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Then on the right panel, create or edit the following values:

Set “AutoEndTasks” value to 1. (default value: 0)

Set “HungAppTimeout” value to 1000. (default value: 5000)

Set “WaitToKillAppTimeout” value to 0. (default value: 20000)

If the key does not exist, you will have to create a new DWORD by right clicking any where at the right panel and select:

and enter the above values.

After you have finish editting the registry, exit the Registry Editor.  Every now and then when an application is not responding, it will end automatically.

Read Also: How to safey edit, restore and backup Windows Registry

[ via Tech Bold ]