Tip - Terminate Programs Quickly

This is an old tip that I rediscovered recently. When a program becomes unresponsive, it is sometimes necessary to terminate the process from the Task Manager. However, after confirming that the process should be killed, there may be a long delay before it happens, especially on a busy computer.

Why is that? Because when a program crashes, Windows XP prepares an error report, using a program called dumprep:

The Dumprep.exe tool is a Windows XP fault logging program. If a serious error occurs, Dumprep.exe writes the error details to a text file. The Dumprep.exe tool then prompts you to send the error information to Microsoft. The Dumprep.exe tool is a non-essential system process that is installed for third-party use.

This is quite useless, and can be easily disabled:

1. Open "System Properties" dialog (My Computer => Properties)
2. Open "Advanced Tab"
3. Press the "Error Reporting" button
4. In the dialog, select the option "Disable Error Reporting" and press OK.

After this change, programs will be terminated without delay.