If you are turning on your computer and going to grab a coffee when it is booting, then the time has come to make a real clean-up to your system. In this article we work on tuning Windows XP and Windows Vista to boot faster.
Introduction
Before getting down to business to make our Windows boot faster, we have to understand why Windows boots slower. One of the main reasons for the slowdown of Windows is us, the users, and the second is Windows itself. Let's start with the first one.
What does a user do? A user install programs on his computer. There is nothing wrong with this, if the user wants his computer to perform a specific task, such as editing spreadsheets, he will install a program to do it. However, the program is not so innocent. Many programs place themselves or some component of themselves, such as the “update checker” to the Windows startup. Some programs have the right to do this, such as device drivers, anti-malware programs, firewalls etc. Although these are logical, it is not acceptable to me for an image viewer to place itself in the start-up; what if I have booted my computer to watch movies but not for viewing images? Why should that program slow down my boot time?
Removing Unwanted Programs
The first place to visit is Start → All Programs → Startup. Right-click there and delete all the shortcuts there. Then head up to your start menu and select Start → All Programs → Run and type “msconfig” which will open up the System Configuration Utility. Switch to the “Start up” tab where you will see various programs that are started when Windows starts. Check the entries carefully and remove any items you think you don't need. There is an important thing to note here: remove the programs you do not need, not the ones you don't recognize. There are two types of programs that you'd better keep:
- Device Drivers: Your sound card, graphics adapter etc. should be running when Windows starts. Don't disable them.
- Anti-malware programs: Don't disable your anti-virus, anti-spyware and other anti-malware products. The same goes for your firewall.
You can safely remove an entry such as “Adobe Assistant” which does not do anything except check periodically for Adobe updates when you are connected to the Internet. Just check the items and evaluate them: do you really need to have them started with Windows? A quick way to determine this may be to check the installed programs; if the entry is about a program that you have installed, other than the drivers and the anti-malware programs, it is more likely that you can remove the program from the startup.
Remove Unused Programs and Fonts
Why would you want to spend your computer resources for the programs you have installed once and never used? Remove those programs which you do not need but are pulling down your computer's performance. No, you do not need the cute kitty screensaver that you installed with the expense of some hard disk space and processor cycles. Nor, do you need the fancy smiling e-mail management program.
Also many users do not know that the fonts present in the C:\Windows\Fonts directory is a real resource hog in Windows boot. Yes, Windows reads all the fonts that you placed there every time the system boots. Make yourself another folder, such as Fonts under My Documents and place your unused fonts there.
Read on for checking Windows XP services, Windows Vista Services and other boot optimizing techniques.
Boot and Run Windows Faster
If your computer is slow to boot up everyday, if your boot time is long enough for grabbing a coffee, then the time has come to roll up your sleeves and start optimizing your system. In this article series we optimize our boot time and optimize our Windows system to work faster.