Windows Taking Too Long to Start: How to Speed Up Boot

1Disable the heavy programs in the Startup tab

This is the highest-return step and the safest: disabling here does not uninstall anything, it only stops the program from opening by itself with Windows. You can still open each one manually when you need it. The impact column does the selection work for you.

1. Right-click the taskbar and choose Task Manager, or press Ctrl, Shift and Esc together.
2. Open the startup apps tab (called Startup in some versions).
3. Click the startup impact column to sort from heaviest to lightest.
4. Disable anything with high impact that you do not need the moment the computer turns on: messaging apps, music players, game stores, cloud utilities and updaters.
5. Do not disable anything carrying the name of your antivirus, audio driver or touchpad driver. If a name leaves you unsure, leave it as it is and move on.
6. Restart and time it again with the clock.

2Try turning Fast Startup off

Fast Startup makes Windows save part of the system state on shutdown, to come back up faster. In practice it often does the opposite on computers with older drivers, and creates that odd effect where Restart is quicker than shutting down and switching on again. Turning it off is reversible and carries no risk.

1. Open Control Panel and go to the power options.
2. Click choose what the power buttons do, in the left column.
3. Click the link that unlocks the settings currently unavailable, at the top of the window.
4. Untick the option to turn on fast startup and save the changes.
5. Shut the computer down completely, switch it on again and compare the time. If it got worse, tick the option back on.

3Rein in the manufacturer utilities

A branded computer arrives with a collection of its own programs: support centre, update manager, audio panel, graphics software, warranty app. Several of them load at startup and, together, account for a good share of the delay. Most can be opened by hand whenever you need them.

1. In the same startup tab of Task Manager, spot the items carrying your computer brand's name.
2. Disable the ones whose purpose is clearly dispensable at power-on, such as assistants, support centres, warranty apps and updaters.
3. Keep active whatever controls hardware you use, such as the audio panel, touchpad gestures or fan control on a gaming laptop.
4. If you have not used any of those programs in months, consider uninstalling them from the installed apps list in Settings.
5. Restart and time it again. This step, together with the first one, resolves most cases.

4Finish the pending updates

While an update is downloading, installing or waiting for a restart, Windows is slow and boot is slower still. Plenty of people live with this for weeks because they postpone the restart every day. Letting it genuinely finish usually restores normal performance with no further intervention.

1. Open Settings and go to the Windows Update area.
2. Click check for updates and let everything that appears download and install.
3. Restart when it asks, and do not postpone. If there is more than one round, repeat until the screen says you are up to date.
4. While you are there, open the optional updates, where drive and motherboard drivers that directly affect boot time sometimes sit.
5. Only time it again after the computer has sat idle for a few minutes with nothing installing.

5Keep only one antivirus

Two active antivirus programs do not give you double the protection: they fight each other and scan the same files twice, at exactly the moment Windows is loading everything. If you installed a third-party antivirus, the built-in one usually steps aside on its own, but leftovers from old installations keep weighing things down.

1. Open the installed apps list in Settings and look for antivirus and security suite names.
2. Uninstall the ones you no longer use, especially those that came pre-installed with an expired trial licence.
3. If you use no third-party antivirus, confirm that the protection built into Windows is active in the security area of Settings.
4. Restart and time it again.

6Find out whether the drive is the bottleneck

This is the answer for anyone who has disabled everything and is still waiting. A computer with a mechanical hard drive takes minutes to start even when clean, because the disk cannot read that many small files at once. Swapping in a solid state drive is the change that transforms this scenario most, far more than any software tweak.

1. Open Task Manager, go to the performance tab and select the disk in the left column: the type is labelled there as HDD or SSD.
2. If it is an HDD and disk usage sits at 100% for the first few minutes after sign-in, that is the bottleneck, and no software tweak will fully solve it.
3. Check the free space too: a nearly full drive gets slower. Leave at least around 15% free.
4. If it is an SSD and still slow, check the drive health with the tool from your computer or drive maker, and consider that it may be nearing the end of its life.
5. If replacing the drive is on the table, back up first: the migration involves reinstalling Windows or cloning the drive, and carries a risk of data loss.

7Measure where the time is going

When the picture does not add up, stop guessing and look at numbers. Windows records every startup and reports how long it took, and the process list right after sign-in shows who is holding the drive. That turns 'it is slow' into 'this program is spending two minutes'.

1. Right-click Start and open Event Viewer.
2. Browse the applications and services logs down to the Windows performance diagnostics logs, where the boot events with each start's duration are recorded.
3. Right after switching the computer on, open Task Manager and sort the processes by the disk column, to see who is taking up the reads.
4. Note the two or three names that stay at the top the longest and go back to the startup tab to disable them.
5. If a system service shows at the top, do not disable it on your own: try updating the related driver first.

8Check system integrity from Command Prompt

A corrupted system file turns boot into a sequence of retries and waits. These commands check and repair the Windows installation using Microsoft's own files. They run slowly, sometimes half an hour, and need an internet connection. Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run one line at a time, in order, restarting at the end.

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
sfc /scannow