Improve the Boot Speed of Your Windows 10

Your PC is slow and it takes lot of time to access your Windows Desktop?

Do you want to increase your productivity and save time by decreasing the time your PC take to boot?

Sure, Windows 10 is considered to be the fastest operating system compared to the older versions of Windows… But with the test of time Windows may become slower than usual and this also affects the startup speed.

Do you want to make your Windows 10 boot faster?

Well my friend there is always a solution (in this article many solutions) to a problem. These tips & tweaks are tested and are proven to work every time I go through them. And will surely work for you!

Let’s look at how we can make your PC boot faster & perform better so you can enjoy working on it and not losing more time using it.

How Much Does Your Windows 10 Take to Boot?

In order to improve your computer’s boot time we need to know how actually it takes for it to boot. This is important so you can get an idea on how much time you gained by applying this tutorial.

Now, you can use your Smartphone’ chronometer or a regular stopwatch to define the time your PC will take to boot. Or you can find the exact time your PC take to boot using the Windows Event Viewer.

First use the Win+R to open the Run command box then type in eventvwr and click “OK“. You can also search “Event Viewer” on Start menu.

Once the Windows Event Viewer is opened go to “Application and Services Logs” > “Microsoft” > “Windows” and expand the folder “Diagnostics-Performance” as well. Click on “Operational“.

This will show you all the events that are related to the boot performance of your computer, including how much time your PC took to boot up.

Look for the first event that has an ID of a 100 and click on it. Below you will have in the tab General the value of “Boot Duration” in milliseconds; in my case 31819ms which is 31,82s. And this is not bad considering I haven’t optimized nor used fast boot yet!

Some of you may have a longer boot time and this tutorial is here to help you speed up your boot time.

Now that you know how much time your computer take to boot, let’s optimize it!

Enable Fast Startup on Windows 10

Surely you heard about Hibernation or Fast Startup one day…

The thing you want to keep in mind is that Fast Startup uses a file called hiberfile.sys to store the kernel session which makes the boot faster.

We are not going to use the “Hibernate” option to shutdown our computer (you can use it if you don’t want your programs to be closed) so I will show you later how to reduce the size of the hiberfile.

Open Power Options using the following key combinations: Win+X, then O

From the left side, click on “Choose what the power button do“.

After that click on “Change settings that are currently  unavailable“.

Then check “Turn on fast startup (recommended)“.

Click the Save changes button at the bottom and restart your PC.

If you don’t have that option, make sure you run this command in CMD as administrator:

powercfg /hibernate on

After the restart check the boot time again and see if you find any difference.

How to Reduce the Size of the Hiberfile

In order to reduce the size of the Hibernation file (do this only if you enabled the fast startup option and you are not using Hibernate mode) we are going to use the command prompt.

Use the following key combinations: Win+X, then hit A

The command prompt will be opened, type the following command:

powercfg /h /type reduced

You can go back to the full hiberfile size using the following command:

powercfg /h /type full

Speed the Boot by Disabling Unnecessary Programs & Services

Speed the Boot by Disabling Startup Programs

You have to know that some programs (and invisible ones) start as soon as you log into Windows. This may cause your system to slow down and may stop you sometimes of doing your activity.

Open the Task Manager using the CTRL+ALT+DEL key combination. You can also use CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

Click on the “Startup” tab. You will see all the startup programs listed.

If you don’t see any tabs just double-click in the blank area near the borders of the window, or click “More details” in the bottom left corner.

Organize the list by Status to show the Enabled programs first and look in the “Startup impact” tab at the right side and disable all the programs with high startup impact. You can disable the programs you want by right-clicking Disable or using the “Disable” button below.

Boost Your PC by Disabling Startup Services

You have to know that some Services that are installed and enabled by third party programs may slow your computer down and make the boot take longer time.

In order to find those Services we are not going to access them from the usual services.msc command we put on Run (Win+R) but rather we are going to access them from the System Configuration window. That is accessed using the command msconfig in Run.

Click on the “Services” tab and check “Hide all Microsoft services” to show only the services that have not came installed with your system.

Also make sure you have 0 in Timeout in the Boot tab.

If you find services you no longer need or use rarely then just un-check them from the list and click “Apply” and “OK“. You will be asked if you want to restart your PC.

Want your PC to Boot even Faster? Go SSD!

It’s like those “Go Vegan!” ads you see everywhere in social media. Except this one is for your PC!

GO SSD!

Believe it or not, having an SSD helped me in many ways and enabled me to achieve the highest performance I can ever dream of.

As we have seen in a previous tutorial on how to create a RamDisk, the SSD is considered to be way faster than the HDD.

I hope this article helped you boost the boot of your computer.

Please share it with your friends, much appreciated!