Windows is a colossal beast, and sometimes, that colossal beast can struggle. You might have weird hitches or weird slowdowns, and when that happens, it's a sign that you should either reinstall Windows or upgrade your hardware. However, slow boot times in particular are sometimes hard to debug, and you can often again just upgrade your hardware to speed things up. However, there are some things you can try before upgrading your hardware to see if it speeds things up, and if it does, you'll have saved a lot of money.

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5 Disable start-up programs

Can massively help performance

If you have a lot of programs on your PC, chances are at least some of these are set to launch at start-up. While many of these are essential or you may find useful, you'd be surprised how many programs are there that you might not necessarily want or need. You can safely turn pretty much all of these off from within Task Manager, which will speed up your boot times.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager Switch to the Startup apps on the left-hand side Right-click and Disable applications that you won't want to start when you boot your PC.

If you're not sure which to disable, there's a Startup impact column on the right-hand side that will tell you how they impact your boot times. Start by disabling those applications, but only disable applications that you recognize and don't want to begin when you turn your PC on.

4 Turn on (or off) Fast Startup

Fast Startup can, funnily enough, slow things down sometimes

Fast Startup is a feature introduced in Windows 8 that has continued through Windows 10 and Windows 11. It promises to speed up your startup times by preloading essential OS components during a PC shutdown. It can be great for boot up times, but users have noted that it can sometimes cause compatibility issues and other problems, including slowing down your boot-up time overall.

While it's rare that it can do so, you should try turning it on if you don't have it on, and you should try turning it off if you have it on. To change this setting, follow these steps:

Open the Start Menu and search for Control Panel. Choose the top result. You should see the view below. If not, use the View by option near the top of the window and choose Category. Alternatively, if you're using the Small icons or Large icons views, you can click Power options and skip to step 5.

Choose Hardware and Sound. Select Power Options. Click on Choose what the power buttons do.

You should now see the Fast Startup option, and you can turn it on or off depending on your preference.

3 Reduce operating system selection timeout

If you have multiple operating systems on your computer, you may be familiar with the screen that comes up asking you to choose which device to boot into. The timeout on this page can actually be reduced, so that your PC automatically selects the top highlighted option faster if it's what you use the most.

Press Windows key + R to open the Run box. Type sysdm.cpl to launch System Properties. Switch to the Advanced tab and click the Settings button under the Startup and Recovery section.

Now, under the System Startup section, reduce the Time to display list of operating systems, and click Ok.

This will now reduce the automatic timeout for booting your default operating system.

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2 Uninstall unneeded applications

A no-brainer, but still works

This may seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be amazed at how many applications you have on your PC that you could probably uninstall immediately. While these applications may not launch immediately at start up, they can still run in the background later on and slow down your PC considerably.

You can uninstall applications from the Windows Settings, so have a look through and see what you can remove. You can also use a tool like Revo Uninstaller.

1 Clear up space on your SSD

Full SSDs can be slower

SSDs slow down when they're close to full capacity, so if you only have a few gigabytes left in your SSD, you should clear some space. While this slowdown mostly pertains to write operations (and not read operations which are the bulk of what happens when booting your PC), your PC still has to write some data while it turns on.

For example, your PC has to write log events, system state updates, registry changes, and potentially even finalize updates if any were being installed. A full SSD will slow down these processes, and it might be worth clawing back some of your storage.