Does anyone have the answer to my small but irritating problem??
on shutting down my PC, various dialogue boxes flash up from windows task manager asking me to end various programmes( these are programmes that usually run in the background) the pc won't close down until all the programmes have been closed down this way. Why is windows XP so lazy, asking me to do the work on it's behalf.
Any idea's????

Hi there and welcome to PC Help Forum

Luckily, for XP there is a general fix for this;

Go to Start>Run>regedit.

1) Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Select WaitToKillAppTimeout and set the value to 1000. Select the HungAppTimeout value and set it to 1000 as well.

2) Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Set the WaitToKillAppTimeoutHungAppTimeout \newline value and set it to 1000 as well.

3) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control. Select the WaitToKillServiceTimeout value and set it to 1000 and set the value to 1000.

Close the Registry Editor.