Slow shutdown with NVIDIA card installed?

[compgirlfhredi]

Some people have noticed that they are experiencing a really slow shutdown after installing Windows XP Home or Professional. Although this can be caused by a number of ways, the most clear cut one so far is happening on systems with an NVidia card installed with the latest set of drivers. A service called NVIDIA Driver Helper Service is loading up on start up and for whatever reason doesn't shut itself down properly. The service isn't needed and can also increase the amount of memory available to your system. Here is how to disable it.
Go into your Control Panel
Select Administrative Tools and then click on Services
Right click on the file "NVIDIA Driver Helper Service" and then select STOP.
To stop this loading up every time you boot up your PC Right click it again and select properties - then where the option "Startup Type" is shown - make sure it is set at Manual.
To reload, simply reverse.

 

[bcastner]

It has always been a worthless service. No matter what version of the drivers, you can safely follow compgirlfhredi's advice to stop the service and disable it from starting in the future.

Just be glad you were not asked to whack a couple hundred milliseconds off of your stuck application settings in the registry.

 

[artharjar]

along those lines if you go to the run command in the start menue, type "msconfig" and hit the startup tab. remove the check boxes next to anything you don't want starting up automaticly. i think the only one you should leave is systray or something to that effect. the rest should be optional.