Computer is slow at start up, takes too long to boot up

Trouble:

Recently a friend of mine asked us to help her out with slow start up of her computer. It takes too long to boot the computer. It was very slow even after it boots. Though the computer had a decent hardware configuration.

This problem is not un-common. The main reason behind such problems is too many start-up tasks start when windows start. Also as we install different software or applications on computer, there are some background tasks associated with some applications which start running at start-up.

Fix:

How to identify the trouble?

Press Shift+Ctrl+Esc key together. This will open up windows task manager.
Click on Performance tab. It looks like something as shown below in the image.

If your the PF usage as shown in the bottom left graph below is higher than the amount of your computer’s RAM (Physical memory), then it slows down your computer considerably. The performance becomes poor and slow.

In such case you need to disable some of your start-up tasks which are not essential for the system. See the steps below for steps to disable start-up tasks.

How to Fix the trouble?

Startup tasks can be easily disabled with the help of a utility by Microsoft called Autoruns. You can download Autoruns from this link. After download, unzip and run Autoruns.exe . It will load like snapshot below. Click on Logon tab as shown in red circle in picture below.

Logon tab shows all the tasks which are automatically start every time windows starts. Have a close look and disable some of the tasks which you don’t need at startup. For example, in some computers, at logon, web cam software, acrobat reader, real player up-dater, yahoo messenger , etc. applications start running while you may not be needing the all the time.

To disable un-necessary items to load at logon, simply un-check those items in the log-on tab as below. These applications can be started later when needed from start menu. After un-checking, just restart your computer and see the difference.

NOTE: Do not disable tasks which you are not very sure about, as they may stop some useful applications to stop from loading at start-up.