What Triggers Aggravatingly Slow Windows Startup

By: Allin Taylor Click author's name for more of his/her articles

My computer has pretty fast windows startup, around 60-70 seconds most of the time. I know that is not newsworthy but a lot of my friends (the ones who won't follow my advice) tell me that their pc's take as long as five minutes to start. To me that seems nuts, but I know it is more common than Microsoft would like to admit. What causes the computer to take so long starting up and what can be done to fix it? These are two great questions and the answers are actually pretty straight forward.

Firstly, what triggers the computer to start so slow? There are several things that add to the problem. Each one of them on it's own puts a little bit more overhead to the process, so fixing just one of the offenders will help a small amount and each subsequent area addressed helps a bit more. The primary cause of slow boot times are startup programs, windows prefetch, temporary files, clogged registry, hard drive fragmentation, low memory, and malware. I will address each of these areas in turn.

Startup programs are simply what the name suggests, programs that are configured to fire up every time you boot your PC. Most of these are not necessary and definitely not desirable. You can find excellent free tools to find and stop these programs very easily. A preferred tool of mine is the startup tool in CCLeaner. Google it and download, it will help.

Lack of memory is another familiar problem. Many of the computers you buy these days do not come pre-installed with the maximum amount of memory they can take. Do some research on your computer to find out how much you currently have installed and how much your computer can handle. Then go purchase what you need to bring it up to max. This is one of the less expensive things you can do and yet it gives some of the biggest performance increases.

Temporary files, this one cracks me up because windows keeps your temporary files around forever if you don't get rid of them yourself. Those look more like permanent files to me. A very easy answer here though is to use a tool you already downloaded, CCleaner. The default function of this tool is to delete temporary files off your computer.

A clogged registry can really slow your computer down. The registry though is a very important piece of your operating system and changes here should be managed with the utmost caution. You can buy or download free registry cleaners, but I would leave registry work to trained professionals.

Hard drive fragmentation is pretty common and is a chief contributer to lengthy boot times. Download and install Smart Defrag. A very good free utility.

Malware, which encompasses all varieties of malicious software from Spyware to Viruses and everything in between, are another major cause of slow start times.

Windows prefetch is a folder that stores files pertaining to your settings of a variety of programs. In time these files grow to be obsolete and filled with ineffective and erroneous information. You should delete the contents of this folder if you have a slow windows startup problem. This is an easy manual process.

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