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 increase or decrease the amount of time it takes before XP reports that the program has hung. Simply Follow these steps:
1. Click on the Start button and select 'Run' 2. Type in 'regedit' and press 'OK' 3. Look for the following string: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop 4. In the right pane right-click on the 'HungAppTimeout' string and select 'Modify' 5. Change the 'Value Data' to any time you want in milliseconds (10000 milliseconds = 1 second) 6. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect