Introduction

How nice would it be if your computer would start up just as fast as it did the day you brought it home? Often, that is the first thing people will notice about their computer when they start it up for the first time. Unfortunately, that dream goes away when we start installing programs, downloading plug-ins, and generally make a mess of things. Add to that the fact that we are impatient beings, and we want our applications yesterday, not 30 seconds from now. To appease our foot-tapping selves, here are some tips that will open up the doors to PC freedom once again.

For OEM (store bought) Computers

If you bought your computer as a pre-built machine from a store (see Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.), chances are that it has a load of trial software on it. PC World actually has an article all about this, and states that “As shipped, nearly all of the 15 PCs [they] tested had more than 80 processes–tasks from the OS or from applications–running. After [they] disabled all of the nonessential junk on each test machine, the number of processes dropped to the mid-thirties.” Extra processes not only steal resources from what you are working on, but also slow down startup dramatically, as Windows has to go through each process and activate it. So what do you do about it? Get your hands on this free tool and run it. It is called the PC Decrapifier, and it was designed to, well, de-crapify your PC. Instructions for use can be found on their website. It picks up on the programs in your computer that you potentially do not need, and shows you a list of what it sees. Select what you want to whack, and it will kill it, processes and all. If you do not know whether or not you should get rid of it, you can visit our forums and ask, or use a search engine and hunt for the answer that way. It will also take care of more minor things like desktop icons and the like. If you feel so obliged, they also give you the option to donate to them for offering you a free, very useful program.

Resource-Sucking Programs

Aside from running the PC Decrapifier, there are a few other things that you can do to boost overall performance on startup.

You need to hunt down some of the other programs or startup processes that are bound to slow things down. Programs like Adobe Reader, iTunes, and Quicktime by default have a startup process that allows you to open the program in question a little quicker (called “pre-loading”). Honestly, the trade-off isn’t really worth it. Details and instructions on another very handy free tool that removes these things easily can be found here. Take special note of when Rich goes through the details of the startup menu. He tells you everything you will need to know.

Other good things to pay attention to are programs that hog resources from the time they get going, all the way through your working day. Believe me when I tell you, one myth that needs debunking is that Norton Internet Security or Norton Anti-Virus products are actually beneficial to system performance. These programs are just about guaranteed to inflate your startup times to ridiculous proportions, and you need to get rid of them promptly. A removal tool can be found here. I am continually amazed that people still recommend this software, when there are solutions out there with a much smaller footprint (that is, they use less resources), for free, that can get the job done just as well, if not better. For a good list of free/cheap applications that will serve you well in this department, check out this page in our forums. Another system security application that falls into the incredibly slow category is McAfee, and arguably Spy Sweeper.

Defrag

So far, we have walked you through some major program elimination that has likely already given you a boost in startup times. On that note, you will have freed up some space on your hard drive by now. Double-click on My Computer, right click your hard drive and select “Properties.” This will show you what kind of space you have left, and also gives you a pie chart to look at. Once you cross the 85% threshold (approximately), you are likely to experience slightly less performance in all areas, including startup. It is here, and after every program install/uninstall that you might consider running a ‘defrag’ on your computer. This will basically rearrange the files on your hard drive so that it can access data easier/faster. Enter your Control Panel, and switch to the Category View if you have not already. Click on “Performance and Maintenance”, and then “Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster”. This will bring you to the Defrag utility within Windows. Click “Analyze” just to see the damage. You will get a message that informs you as to whether or not you need to defrag at that point.

In Windows Vista, it is slightly different. You want Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Administrative Tools>Defragment your hard drive.

XP Users Only

Try out BootVis. This program originally belonged to Microsoft, but they have stopped supporting it. It still works, and you can download it here.  Follow these instructions and you will be analyzing and reconfiguring your system startup to give you a 30-second-or-better boot time. Be sure to close all programs and bookmark this page for reference. There are a few different ways to use this program. Here is just one:

Once you open it, go File>New>Next Boot + Drivers Trace. You will see a window pop up that asks you how many reboots and how many traces you want to run. The default is fine, but you can increase those numbers if you choose. Click OK. This will give you a countdown for a reboot. Once your computer is back up and running, BootVis will open up automatically and show you a record of Boot Activity, among other things. You can use this to manually disable processes that are taking a really long time to initialize, and see how much of your boot process is actually taken up by various tasks. If you want BootVis to do the work for you, go Trace>Optimize System. This will automatically shuffle tasks and try and find a boot sequence that can speed up your times. Beware though, this is an automatic configuration, meaning it might do something you do not want it to. You will not run into any critical errors, but it may end up disabling something you want.

For the Vista Users

Some of you will be able to take advantage of a cool trick that Microsoft came up with called ReadyBoost. The basic principle is that you can use a USB flash drive as extra RAM. Simply plug it in, and if it/your version of Vista is ReadyBoost compatible, you will be given that option in the autoplay menu. If said menu doesn’t appear for whatever reason, just enter Computer, right click on the flash drive, and select Properties. There will be a tab labeled “ReadyBoost.” Once in that tab, you can select the amount of space on that drive that you want to use as RAM. Also remember to NOT unplug the drive until it is safely disconnected by using the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature.

Because most, if not all, of us still use mechanical hard drives, the actual reduction in boot time directly related to ReadyBoost is uncertain; you are more likely to see a performance boost within applications. However, flash drives are very cheap right now (as in “$30 can get you 4 gigs” kind of cheap), and if you do use Vista, you cannot really go wrong by trying this option.

Improvements I Saw

On a Vista laptop (Acer Aspire 5110): Before using any tweaks mentioned here and before ReadyBoost, I timed an agonizingly slow 2:45. ReadyBoost by itself shaved 5 seconds off, and after applying tweaks the time dropped all the way down to 1:30.

On my XP desktop, before a standard cleaning (which I do about once a week), my average startup time was ~50 seconds. After cleaning and using BootVis (which was new to me) my time shot down to 28 seconds.

Disclaimer

Just keep in mind that with all of these tips, mileage may vary. I cannot say how fast your PC will be after you do all of these things because every PC is different, as is the one that uses it. I tried to keep it relatively simple while also giving you a taste of some very cool things that can be done with Windows. There are many more complicated things that you can do (ie registry tweaking) but that is beyond the scope of this article. On that note, some of these tips still require you to ‘geek out’ a little, meaning you can screw something up if you aren’t careful. When in doubt, search it.