How To Reduce PC Startup Time in 5 Easy Ways

One of the biggest changes Windows 8 brought with it is fast boot. Windows 8 boots up noticeably faster than its predecessors because of better resource management and is known to drastically reduce startup time even on older computers. Even though the OS itself is responsible for startup time, you can change a couple of settings to make it even faster. Here’s how to reduce PC startup time in 5 easy ways!

Ways to Reduce PC Startup Time

Uninstall unnecessary programs

Even though not needed, we tend to install and keep a lot of programs. Not only does this take up precious disk space, but it also includes the added headache of background agents and startup entries. To make the software startup faster, developers usually include background agents to keep information cached and ready for launch. This slows down general performance as well. So go ahead and remove programs you don’t use frequently or haven’t used in a while, your computer is better off without them.

Remove useless startup entries

Probably the easiest and most common way to reduce your computer startup time, removing useless startup entries is a solution that makes a lot of difference. You can do this in a couple of ways. If you use tools like CCleaner or Tune Up Utilities, you can simply go to the startup programs tab and get rid of entries that aren’t needed. Even if you don’t use any such tool you can still do this though the Microsoft System Configuration Utility (msconfig). Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Go to Start>Run.

Step 2: Type “msconfig” and press enter.

Step 3: Navigate to the Startup tab and simply uncheck entries that aren’t needed on startup, like the Java Updater, Adobe Updater or programs like a media player that really have no business during immediate startup. Make sure not to uncheck driver control panels. If you’re using Windows 8, you will be redirected to the new Task Manager that now houses startup entries.

Get rid of old or unused hardware drivers

At startup, Windows loads all your hardware drivers which can slow down boot time. There might be hardware that you don’t use anymore that are still listed in the device manager which are slowing down startup. Head over to your device manager and remove unused or old hardware entries like old printers, memory card hubs, Bluetooth controllers etc. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1: Go to Start>Control Panel>Device Manager (or) Right click left bottom corner and click Device Manager on Windows 8.

Step 2: Select View>Show Hidden Devices.

Step 3: Find out the hardware you don’t use and right click them to see the “Uninstall” option. If there’s something you use occasionally, consider just disabling it and enabling it only when required.

Just make sure you don’t remove anything important, eh?

Tweak your BIOS settings

Usually when your computer is booting up, unless set otherwise, it searches for other boot devices then boots into the HDD. Setting your HDD as the first boot device eliminates this search and makes sure that no time is wasted in looking for other boot devices. You can do this through the “Boot” menu in your computer’s BIOS. Oh also check if “Quick Boot” or “Fast Boot” is checked in advanced boot options, it skips some tests that would otherwise take some time.

Defragment your hard drive and run disk cleanup

Fragmentation is a problem every standard hard disk drive has to deal with. It basically happens when chunks of data are stored physically apart on the magnetic disk inside an HDD. Naturally, this distribution makes it difficult for Windows to read efficiently, so it’s recommended to keep your drives defragmented, specially if you’re someone who moves a lot of data back and forth. This can be done through external tools or the built in Windows Defragmentation tool. Even getting rid of temporary files through disk cleanup helps. Windows 7 lets you do this through the System Tools in Accessories, and disk cleanup can be done by right clicking a partition. On Windows 8, simply click on a partition in Computer and under the ribbon menu you should be able to find “Manage”, with options to Optimize and Cleanup the disk.

Those were 5 easy ways to reduce PC startup time, do let us know if you have any queries or if you have any more solutions!