Change the Timeout for Hanged Applications

How can I change the timeout for hanged applications in Windows XP?

When an application hangs and no longer responds, Windows XP displays a dialog box that prompts you to kill the application or wait a while longer.

By default, the dialog box appears after the application hasn’t responded for a half of a second. You can tweak XP to increase or decrease the amount of time it takes before XP reports that the program has hung.

To do so do the following:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).

2. Locate the following key in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

3. Make sure you backup the keys by exporting them to a .reg file.

4. On the HungAppTimeout value, change the setting from 5000 (the default) to any time you want (in milliseconds – decimal).

5. Close the registry editor.

6. Restart your computer.