How to turn off automatic termination of applications which block Windows shutdown

At many instances you must have seen that Windows prompt you that its waiting for an application to close when you shutdown your computer. It also asks your permission for termination. During this Windows actually kills or closes of may programs without asking you except few for which it gives you a notice.

Some users  might not like this because sometimes they forget that a task is running in background ( and hence they start the shutdown) and lot of work and data is lost. To change this particular behavior of windows follow the steps below : ( You should be a admin user to do this )

  • Open Group Policy Editor. ( gpedit.msc )
  • Go to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Shutdown.
  • Select the template which says Turn of Automatic termination of applications  that block or cancel  shutdown.
  • Enable this and save.

Turn of Termination Windows

Done this Windows will not kill any such application and you will have to take the pain to close all open applications to shutdown. Yup that’s the drawback for valuable for some.

Related : How to abort shutdown | Instant Shutdown

1 COMMENT

  1. Hello Ashish,
    Users of Vista Home & Home Premium do not have the ability to use Group Policy Editor. Can you publish the registry tweaks required to do the same thing?

    I have also looked high and low for a way to enable gpedit.msc on the Home versions and not found one that works. I have also looked for a third-party program which would perform exactly like Group Ploicy Editor but I have yet to find any. Would you have any insight into this problem?

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