SPEED UP STARTUP
Slash your boot times and free up vital system resources at the same time to give your PC a major speed fillip—this section shows you how
Over time, you’ll notice how much longer it takes Windows to start up. Optimizing your startup times isn’t simply about getting your PC to boot faster, though—it also has a beneficial effect on your machine’s general performance. That’s because, as you install programs on your computer, some of them configure themselves to load at startup. The process of loading these startup apps naturally lengthens boot times, but the apps also consume additional resources, producing a drag on your computer’s overall performance, too.
Some startup processes—your security software for one—are essential, and shouldn’t be touched. Others, such as your cloud sync app, are best left running, too, but you’ll find many apps and programs aren’t used often enough to justify allowing them to gobble up resources in the way that they do. The trick is identifying and disabling them.
Monitor Boot Times
Startup programs aren’t the only things that slow down Windows’ boot time. The step-by-step guide below shows you how to monitor your boot time and manage startup programs using the free BootRacer app. You’ll see that it divides the boot process into four stages. The first is pre-boot, and this covers the time it takes your computer to initialize its hardware and run various checks before handing over control to Windows. The figure should be three to five seconds on a PC with Fast Boot enabled— see the “Fast Boot” boxout above-right for more details.
If it doesn’t appear to be enabled, type “power” into the Search box and click “Choose a power plan.” Click “Choose what the power buttons do.” If “Turn on fast startup (recommended)” isn’t checked, click “Change settings that are currently
unavailable,” check the box, and click “Save changes.” Should you need to access the UEFI settings going forward, go to “Settings > Update and recovery.” Click “Restart now” under “Advanced startup,” then select “Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings.”
Speed Up Windows Boot
The Windows Boot section refers to the time your PC takes to get to the login screen. This is determined by your version of Windows as well as the speed of your drive—under 10 seconds on a fast SSD, for example—and the drive’s condition.
If the time has got noticeably longer (minutes rather than seconds), check the condition of the drive. To do that, open a Command Prompt window with admin privileges—Windows 8.1 and 10 users can choose “Command Prompt (admin)” after pressing Win-X—then type the following, and hit Enter:
chkdsk c: /f /r /x You need to reboot to run Disk Check. Be patient—it may take some time to complete, and appear to be stuck at certain points. If errors are found and fixed, you should find that Windows now boots more quickly.
If you’re running Windows 7 on a nonSSD drive, click “Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter” to analyze and—if necessary—defragment the drive. Again, if defragmentation is required, you should find performance improves.