How to: Four simple ways to speed up your Windows PC boot up time

So you turn on the power button to your computer....waiting for Windows to boot.....you see the Manufactures screen......then you see the Windows 10 screen.

Waiting....waiting........you go decide to make a cup of coffee.
You come back.....your desktop has appeared.....but the hourglass is showing....meaning programs are running in the background. 

OMG!! Two minutes later....."finally!!"

How often have we gone thru that?
Well....it doesn't really have to be that way. In fact, the following steps will trim your Windows boot time from a slow snail's pace to a quick rabbit on caffeine.

Disabling certain startup programs

It's a well-known fact. The longer you have a PC, the more you'll end up downloading programs and software. Some programs that automatically get stored into memory as Windows starts up, slowing the boot time. Printer programs and drivers, antivirus software...and other software.
By disabling some of these programs you can speed up Windows boot time.

1. Right-click (not left click) on the Start Menu, and click "Task Manager"
2. When the Task Manager appears, click on Startup - here is where the current programs assigned by Windows to startup automatically.
3.  Right-click on the program you don't want to start automatically and select Disable

Upgrading your hardware

A second way to speed up your Windows startup is to upgrade your system's hardware.
With desktops, your options in doing this are a little more than if you have a laptop. First, try upgrading your memory. If you have a desktop or laptop running 4gb of RAM, look into possibly upgrading to 6 or 8GB.

To see the status of your memory usage, right-click the taskbar, and select Task Manager. Click the Performance tab: In the lower-left corner, you’ll see how much RAM is in use. If under normal use, the Available option is less than 25 percent of the total, an upgrade may do you some good.

Crucial and Kingston are major PC memory providers and Crucial has a memory diagnostic tool to determine what kind of memory as well as Kingston Memory scanner.

Upgrade from a Hard Drive to a Solid State Drive

As SSDs work with flash memory (the kind that are in USB drives) they can be up to 8 times faster than standard hard drives. This speeds your Windows boot time tremendously.

See my Advantages of SSDs to Hard Drives article for more information on this.

Use Sleep instead of Shut Down

When you have finished with whatever you're doing on your PC, select Sleep instead of completely shutting the computer down.

If you choose Shut Down Windows closes all apps, programs, logs you off and closes the Windows session, and shuts down the computer.

Sleep keeps the Windows session open and uses a low power state (not shutting the PC completely) thereby starting Windows instantly.

Originally posted 4/16/18