If you want to shutdown or restart your Windows XP computer quicker, it's best to create your own shortcut commands on the desktop. Not only do these commands make it quicker to start the shutdown or restart process, they also perform the operation with less of the "cruft" so that the shutdown or restart happens quicker. Here's how to create shortcuts to do this.

1 -- Right click in an empty area of the Desktop and from the contextual menu select New and then Shortcut as seen here:



2 -- In the create shortcut window, enter the following for the location of the item; shutdown -s -t 0 for an icon to shutdown the computer, or shutdown -r -t 0 for an icon to restart your computer. It should look something like this:



3 -- Click Next > and then enter a name for the shortcut. This is the name that will be shown for the icon on your desktop:



4 -- Click the Finish button and you'll have a new icon on your desktop like so:



Clicking on this icon will then result a much faster shutdown of your computer.

If you want to get really fancy, after the icon is created you can right click on it and select Properties option and then select the Shortcut tab. In that window you'll find a button called Change Icon.... Clicking this will allow you to customize the image used for your new shutdown/restart shortcut.