Here’s five ways to fix a slow-booting Windows 10 PC, including preventing apps from automatically launching and upgrading your hardware.
Over time PCs get bogged down with too many apps, fading hardware or general digital gunk in the system. There are numerous ways to speed up Windows , but if the problem with your laptop or desktop PC is very long startup times then the causes could be quite specific.
The good news is that we have a few ways to fix a slow booting Windows 10 PC .
When you install new programs, many will want to launch automatically when you start up your PC. This can be a good thing, especially for the likes of OneDrive, Google Drive, or anti-virus packages. It’s convenient and – for some apps – essential.
The problem is that as more apps join this list, boot times will become longer. Multiply this by a year or two and your PC can take an age to be usable when you turn it on.
Fixing this is relatively easy though, as Windows 10 provides controls over which apps are allowed to run at launch. To access these settings hold down CTRL+ALT+DEL and then select Task Manager from the menu that appears.
If this is the first time you’ve used this program you’ll need to click the ‘ More details’ option at the bottom of the window. Now you should see a list of all the programs running on your system.
Select the Start-up tab and you’ll now be able to disable any apps that you think could do without when you first turn on your PC. For a more in-depth explanation of how this works try our How to change Windows 10 startup programs guide.
Bear in mind that you’re not removing the programs from your PC. You can still use them, but they won’t automatically start up. And it’s probably only worth disabling those that have a High or Medium impact.
As a guide, you can usually disable ‘updater’ or ‘helper’ programs. The associated program won’t automatically update, though, so you’ll have to check manually for updates.
