How To Make WIndows Boot Up Faster
You’ve done this all before. And got the t-shirt. You have to do something right now on your PC but the screen is blank, meaning it’s turned off. You curse under your breath. You’re in for a long wait while Windows messes around and thinks about waking up your PC. I mean, it’s not like it’s got other things to do.
So how can you make your Windows PC boot up quicker?
It seems like the older your PC is, the more time it takes for it to boot up and start running. You begin to think that Microsoft has shares in your energy company as they appear to want you to leave your computer running 24 hours a day.
Fortunately, there are some things you can do to reduce the time it takes your computer to run through its boot sequence.
Windows checks anything that automatically runs as soon as you start your computer. All the essential stuff like Windows itself. Plus all the other software that absolutely must run on your system. Windows Messenger. Apple’s iTunes music program. Your anti-virus software. Maybe a spyware checker. Skype or another VOIP program. Anything and everything you might need. In case anything’s changed since you closed your PC, Windows will go off and check all these programs that run when it starts up.
It is possible to discover what these programs are. But you should be careful – just because you don’t recognize a program doesn’t automatically mean it shouldn’t be running. Some essential Windows services that run in the background have names you wouldn’t begin to guess at. But if you remove them, you’ll be in trouble. The rule with startup programs should be if you’re in doubt, leave it running. It’s not worth shaving off a few seconds on boot up only to have a PC that refuses to work at all. So it’s probably worth leaving this to your friendly techie.
The next thing you can do is clean up the Windows registry. This is the part of Windows that holds all sorts of information about your computer. A lot of this is either needed or at least useful. But removing or upgrading programs will almost always leave traces of itself in the registry. This causes your PC to slow down. Lots of PC problems have been traced to this old information laying around.
The good news is that you can fix this yourself using a purpose designed Registry checking program. This will wizz through your registry, looking for errors, inconsistencies and out of date information. After the scan, you’ll get a simple report and the program can be allowed to go off and correct the errors it’s found. This is probably the simplest thing you can do to speed up your PC. Personally, I let Error Sweeper run every night to find and fix registry errors.
If you’d like to know more about speeding up your Windows system, click here.