How To: Make your computer start up faster

Well, this is a slightly more abstract How To, but I will give it a shot anyways. From my experience, it seems as though most people complain about slow start up speeds and yet run a million programs at startup. I guess I will outline a couple of steps that can be taken to minimize your startup time.

1)Run the Disk Defragmenter that can be found in Start–> Program Files–> Accessories–> System Tools –> Disk Defrag. Defragmenting your disk rearranges your data in ways that hopefully will optimize read time. It can take a long time (2+ hours) if you have a large hard drive that has not been taken care of.

2)Scan your computer for viruses with whatever anti-virus program you have. This is an obvious one, but often a slow startup can have to do with an infection.

3)Scan your computer for spyware in the same manner. Steps 2 and 3 will hopefully rid you of any hindering malware that could potentially slow your startup time.

4)Go through your add/remove programs list (found in control panel) and remove any program that you KNOW you are not using and is not used for a vital system process. If you are not sure, simply google the name of the program you are considering deleting and make sure it is not vital.

5)Get rid of any bloat-ware (memory hogging, or unnecessary memory using programs that are not really used). Unless you have a lot of memory (2+ gigs), you are probably losing major performance by running the store-bought anti-virus software that most people have (such as Norton and McAfee). My suggestion is that you remove these anti-virus programs that are hogging your limited system resources and replace them with a small reliable anti-virus program like AVG Free as I have discussed in the How To: Load up your computer for FREE post. This will speed up your computer a substantial amount, especially at the start when Norton usually loads all of its constituents.

Also, most computers come with pre-loaded software. Lots of this stuff is completely unnecessary and is usually unused by the general pc user. If you have (for example) a toshiba laptop, it usually comes preloaded with Toshiba … Utility. Google each utility on the net and see if you are going to use it, if not, remove it.

6)Most people have a million programs that start at the start-up of the system. Most of these programs can be found down in the bottom right corner of the screen. Chances are that most of them are not actually being used by you and are instead just sitting doing nothing. Get rid of the ones you KNOW you don’t need.

Also, if you are using Windows Live Messenger, stop it from running at start-up (can be done in the program preferences or by using msconfig–> next part).

7)Alright, this is the only somewhat tricky part, and you have to be sure what you are stopping from loading at startup. If you run msconfig (as shown in my little clip) you can go to the startup tab and see all the programs that run at startup. You will then systematically google every .exe program that you are uncertain as to what they are. If the program is unneeded, simply de-select the check mark and that program will no longer start at startup.

Now, make sure to always leave the antivirus, antispyware and other vital system processes alone when checking and unchecking what programs you would like to have start at startup. When you restart your computer, a notice box will appear telling you that have have modified some settings, just click on the “don’t tell me again” box.

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~ by cmorin on March 11, 2008.