Have you noticed that overtime that your computer is taking longer to boot up. From the time your press the power button until you have a fully clickable desktop takes about 5 minutes or more? Most of the time this is due to the multiple programs that are also started up when you turn on your computer. If you noticed that there are a lot of icons in your system tray (near the clock), those are the programs that are started automatically when you turn on your computer. Each of those applications adds to the time your computer takes to fullly boot up. And some of those applications continue to use up your resources while running in the background and slows your computer down to a crawl. So here’s a guide on how to disable those applications wich you dont need from starting up automatically. I mostly prefer to disable all except for the anti virus and firewall software.
Before making any changes to the computer it is strongly advised that you make a system restore point so that we can easily restore the computer to a working state just incase we mess something up. Ok here’s how you do it.
Step 1: Open the System Configuration Utility
- for XP, click start > run, then type msconfig on the run box and press ENTER
- for VISTA, click start type msconfig on the search box then press ENTER
- alternately, you can just press the windows logo + R to open up the run box, this works for XP and VISTA
Step 2: Disable programs from startup
- with the System configuration Utility Open, click on the startup tab
- uncheck the boxes for the programs that you dont want to load automatically on startup. just use your judgement on which programs you want to start automatically on startup. unckecking these boxes does not mean that you are removing the program or uninstalling it from your computer. this just disables the program from starting automatically. for example – you disabled yahoo messenger from startup. the icon for yahoo messenger will no longer come up in the system tray but you can still open up your yahoo messenger by clicking on the YM shortcut in your desktop.
- click on apply, then click close
- prompt will ask you if you want to restart the computer, just click on restart
Step 3: Disabling System Configuration Utility pop-up message
- after the computer reboots and brings you back up to the desktop, a message will come up telling you that you have just edited the system configuration utility… blah.. blah.. blah.. just click on the checkbox Dont Show this message again the click on ok.
That’s it. This should increase the bootup time of your computer. Most of the time its your antivirus software or firewall that takes up much of the boot up time process, but it is recommended that you do not disable these from booting up bec. the risk of running without protection will not compensate for a small increase in boot up time.
If incase after doing this your computer will no longer boot up, try running the Last Known Good Configuration or Run System Restore.
