Monitor and improve Windows startup...

Bootracer ( www.greatis.com/ bootracer) has become our go-to app for managing startup. Not only does it enable you to see which programs are launching with Windows, it times everything too, enabling you to keep an eye on the boot process and giving you a heads up should some resource-sapping program suddenly insert itself into the start-up process. Here’s a quick rundown of its key features.

1 TIME YOUR START

The first thing BootRacer does is measure your start time from the moment your PC is switched on until your start-up apps finish loading. This helps you identify bottlenecks at different points of the process, so you can target your troubleshooting.

2 DELAYED START

BootRacer also inserts a delay of 10 seconds to the start-up process to give Windows a chance to finishing loading before any start-up programs are launched. This helps stop your PC from being overwhelmed by demands for system resources.

3 STAGGERED LOADING

Furthermore, BootRacer also loads programs in sequence, one after the other — again to balance the demands on your PC. Click the three-line ‘hamburger’ button to reveal a list of all the programs that are loading, along with their respective start-up times.

4 MONITOR AND MANAGE APPS

Click ‘Startup Control’ from the main program to manage start-up programs. You can disable or delete them from here, and rearrange their running order — for example, to get fast-loading programs launched first.