When I log off or shut-down my system always hangs for about 2 minutes
with the message "Saving your settings...". During that time there is no
apparent activity (i.e. no disk accesses, no processes showing high-CPU
utilization, nothing - the system just sits and waits - but for
what???).

I presume it is waiting for some application or service that does no
longer responds until some timeout strikes. I am no longer willing to
accept that waiting time! But rather than just "flipping the power
switch" (which I already did a few times when I was really tired to wait
and had to leave NOW) I would rather prefer changing the relevant
timeout values such that the system aborts these non-responsive
processes after at most 5 seconds or so and then has a chance to do an
at least somewhat decent shutdown.

Does someone have a (pointer to a) description or list of relevant
registry entries (or whatever it takes) to shorten these shutdown delays
to an absolute minimum?

Michael