One of our readers named Nassir submitted the following question:
My PC takes for ever to reboot. Could you show me ways to speed it up?
Let me count the ways, actually. The problem of a slow boot process is one that has about as many solutions as it has causes. But, here is one piece of data that, if you understand, will simplify the entire thing for you:
The more stuff that Windows has to start up during boot, the longer it will take to complete.
So, with that in mind, the first thing you need to do is start unloading programs which are set to start automatically when you boot Windows. There are two places, primarily, that you want to look at:
- Look in the “Startup” folder in your Start Menu. Anything in that folder is set to start automatically. To remove a program from this folder, simply navigate to the “Startup” folder in your Start Menu, right-click on the item you want to remove, and choose “Delete” from the menu. This will not delete the program…only the shortcut to it.
- There are a lot of programs set to start automatically that do not put themselves conveniently in the “Startup” folder. To get to those, you have to get into the Windows registry. Now, I don’t recommend tinkering with the registry unless you’re already familiar with it (and chances are if you are getting anything out of this post, you’re not). So, it is best to use another utility to get to it. The “built-in” way is to go to the Start Menu > Run and type in “msconfig” and press Enter. The “System Configuration” window will appear. Go to the “Startup” tab to get a full list of programs that are starting up automatically. Uncheck the ones that you want to disable. Then press “OK” to save your changes. On the next reboot, you will be warned about selective startup. Just click through it because it is OK.
Now, sometimes when you are looking into processes that start automatically, you can tell upon inspection what program it is. Other times you can’t, or you don’t know enough about it to know whether it is safe to disable or not. For this, I recommend the Ultimate Troubleshooter, a utility which looks at your Windows processes and provides a plain-English description of what it is and whether you can turn it off or not.
Aside from automatically starting programs, you also want to clean out general “gunk” from your system. For this, I recommend CCleaner. It is a free utility which will help you scan for and remove crap that is not needed. It will also scan your registry and help you clean it up. It also, conveniently, will allow you to view and disable startup processes, just like “msconfig”.
While you’re at it, check out your list of Windows services. Any service which is set to start automatically will do just that. But, many of those processes may be unnecessary because you rarely if ever use the feature which they enable. If this is the case, you can go and turn the startup mode for the service to “Manual”.
And lastly, let me give you a little list of other items you can look into to speed up your boot process:
- Add more memory. More memory (up to 2 gigabytes) always makes Windows run more smoothly.
- Reduce the number of fonts installed under Windows. The more fonts you have, the more Windows performance is impacted.
- Get a hard drive with a faster RPM speed.
- Fine tune your security software. If you have anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software installed at maximum settings, this can slow down your computer a great deal.
- Defragment routinely.
Yeah, users of other operating systems probably laugh at how Windows slows down so much when you load it up. Such is the nature of using an operating system which uses a registry. But, until Microsoft decides to completely change the way Windows operates, we will have to think about the above when trying to figure out why Windows runs so slow.
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