Speed Up Your Computer Start Up - Windows Startup Apps

I wanted to post this article because I remember having a laptop back in the good old days, where starting it up would take and age. I would have to wait at around 3-5 minutes before I could use my machine. I wish I knew what I am about to write in this article back then.

Windows machines have a built in feature whereby applications start up automatically behind the scene. Applications that start up immediately after logging into your Windows machine are known as start up applications. All applications take some amount of time to start up, that means if you have a large list of start up applications, your machine will take longer to prepare as it is launching each of those start up applications. Some computers are zippy enough to handle the loading of the applications without causing an issue, if you have one of these laptops then this article may not be for you.

Essentially, disabling unnecessary start up applications may help with the speed of loading your computer on start up.

Okay, let's get into how we can do this:

1. To disable these start up applications and stop them from launching automatically, you will need to first open task manager. This can be done by right clicking your mouse or track pad on an empty space on the task bar area, at the bottom of your screen, then selecting the option called task manager. If the task manager option does not appear, try pressing the Escape, Shift and CTRL keys together on your keyboard.

After the task manager window has opened, if it says show more on the bottom left corner of the window please click this.

2. Now, if your device is using the Windows 10 operating software or a Windows operating software prior to this, you will have a tab across the top of task manager called startup, click on this to see a list of all of your start up applications.

If your device is using the Windows 11 operating software, there will be an option called startup apps to the left hand side.

To disable an app from starting automatically and taking up your computer resources, simply highlight one from the rows listed and click on the disable button on the bottom right. Do this for each of the applications or processes you do not require to launch on start up. If you do not have the disable button, simply right click the option and then click on disable from the popup menu.

That's all there is to it, the next time your computer restarts, it will not automatically open the disabled applications in the background, allowing your device to load faster.

Note: We advise you do not disable applications unless you know what they are and what they do, there are some applications which are beneficial to opening automatically, like an audio software or touchpad mouse tracking software.