Any way to skip WS2008's “program is not responding” window or set a time out for it?

Question

I'm running a few game servers on Windows Server 2008, and sometimes they crash or freeze. This is all fine if they crash, as then my restart script can restart them, but if they just freeze, Windows will simply keep them frozen or ask if I'd like to wait or close them.

Is there any way to "skip" this prompt or add a time out (say, 10 seconds) to it, after which it would automatically force close the frozen application?

Answer 1

You need to add a key in the registry to make windows no longer wait for hanging programs.

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Add a REG_SZ [String Value].

Name: AutoEndTasks
Value Data: 1

Reboot afterwards and you should be good to go.