diff --git a/WHATSNEW b/WHATSNEW
index 7eb1b949c..4e48b0368 100644
--- a/WHATSNEW
+++ b/WHATSNEW
@@ -107,6 +107,15 @@ Other changes:
    used to manifest itself in unrelated errors like
    Bugzilla Report 43586.
 
+ * A change that made <exec> more reliable on Windows (Bugzilla Report
+   5003) strongly impacts the performance for commands that execute
+   quickly, like attrib.  Basically no single execution of a command
+   could take less than a second on Windows.
+   A few timeouts have been tweaked to allow these commands to finish
+   more quickly but still they will take longer than they did with Ant
+   1.7.1.
+   Bugzilla Report 48734.
+
 Changes from Ant 1.8.0RC1 TO Ant 1.8.0
 ======================================
 
diff --git a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/PumpStreamHandler.java b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/PumpStreamHandler.java
index 1187ac175..573f40679 100644
--- a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/PumpStreamHandler.java
+++ b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/PumpStreamHandler.java
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ public class PumpStreamHandler implements ExecuteStreamHandler {
         finish(errorThread);
     }
 
-    private static final long JOIN_TIMEOUT = 500;
+    private static final long JOIN_TIMEOUT = 200;
 
     /**
      * Waits for a thread to finish while trying to make it finish
@@ -160,11 +160,18 @@ public class PumpStreamHandler implements ExecuteStreamHandler {
      */
     protected final void finish(Thread t) {
         try {
-            t.join(JOIN_TIMEOUT);
             StreamPumper s = null;
             if (t instanceof ThreadWithPumper) {
                 s = ((ThreadWithPumper) t).getPumper();
             }
+            if (s != null && s.isFinished()) {
+                return;
+            }
+            if (!t.isAlive()) {
+                return;
+            }
+
+            t.join(JOIN_TIMEOUT);
             if (s != null && !s.isFinished()) {
                 s.stop();
             }
diff --git a/src/tests/antunit/taskdefs/exec/exec-test.xml b/src/tests/antunit/taskdefs/exec/exec-test.xml
index c7202f9c4..84f66d3e2 100644
--- a/src/tests/antunit/taskdefs/exec/exec-test.xml
+++ b/src/tests/antunit/taskdefs/exec/exec-test.xml
@@ -628,4 +628,41 @@
       </exec>
     </target>
     
+    <target name="testDoesntWaitForChildren"
+            description="https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5003">
+      <mkdir dir="${input}/org/example"/>
+      <pathconvert dirsep="/" property="out">
+        <path location="${output}"/>
+      </pathconvert>
+      <echo file="${input}/org/example/CallHello.java"><![CDATA[
+package org.example;
+public class CallHello {
+    public static void main(String[] args)
+        throws Exception {
+        Runtime.getRuntime().exec("java -cp ${out} org.example.Hello");
+        Thread.sleep(1 * 1000);
+        System.out.println("finished");
+    }
+}]]></echo>
+      <echo file="${input}/org/example/Hello.java"><![CDATA[
+package org.example;
+public class Hello {
+    public static void main(String[] args)
+        throws Exception {
+        for (int i = 0; i < 20; ++i) {
+            System.out.println("Hello " + i);
+            System.out.flush();
+            Thread.sleep(1 * 1000);
+        }
+    }
+}]]></echo>
+      <mkdir dir="${output}"/>
+      <javac srcdir="${input}" destdir="${output}"/>
+      <exec executable="java">
+        <arg line="-cp ${output} org.example.CallHello"/>
+      </exec>
+      <au:assertLogContains text="finished"/>
+      <au:assertLogDoesntContain text="Hello 20"/>
+    </target>
+
 </project>