HOW TO CORRECT THE SYSTEM HANGUP TIME AT THE STARTUP
If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:
1. Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
2. Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service, disable it, apply the changes & reboot.
This problem with the Background Intelligent Transfer Service should have been corrected in Windows update Q 314862, part of Service Pack 1.
HOW TO REDUCE THE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN TIME
When you hit the Turn Off button, a message is sent to all programs running on your XP system to shutdown. The default time to allow applications to shutdown is 20 seconds. To reduce this time to say 5 seconds, in the Registry Editor navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Here, double-click on the value “WaitToKillAppTime” and change its default value 20000 to 5000 and select the OK button.
If you want to change the shutdown time to 1 second then reduce the value to 1000. This is the minimum time for shutdown
HOW TO MAKE SHORTCUTS ON YOUR KEYBOARD
If you want to access quickly to everything then just follow the rules which I say. This article will tell you how to makes shortcuts on your keyboard that are Ctrl + Alt + "Any Key Of Your Choice." Here's what you have to do:
1. Make shortcuts of the programs you want shortcuts to somewhere in your start menu.
2. Right click on one of them and click on Properties.
3. Now click on Shortcut if its not already there.
4. Click on ShortCut Key's white area box and type a letter other than ones used by XP like Ctrl Alt Del and stuff. I used the number 1 through 0 (after 9).
Do that and it should work. If it doesn't make sure its in the Programs part of the Start Menu, I haven't tried outside programs, if it still doesn't work go to the help section and ask a microsoft person.
