The Top 7 Ways to Speed Up Windows 10 Boot Time

Speeding up Windows 10 boot time.

Windows 10 brought us many notable features, including support for universal apps, fingerprint and face recognition login, and a redesigned user interface. But as far as boot times go, tests consistently show that it’s slower than its predecessors.

When you need to get to work straight away, even 1 or 2 seconds can make a difference. The good news is that there are plenty of tweaks you can do to speed up Windows 10 boot times without upgrading your hardware. Discover the best of them below.

1. Enable Fast Startup

Windows 10 comes with a built-in startup accelerator aptly named “Fast Startup”. Don’t get too excited yet as this works only with shutdowns, and only if you have the hibernate option enabled.

That’s because Fast Startup saves your essential system files much in the same way that hibernation does so that it can load them more quickly the next time you boot.

To enable Fast Startup:

1. Go to Settings > Power & Sleep

2. Click on Additional power settings under Related settings

3. Choose what the power buttons do from the left sidebar

4. Turn on fast startup (recommended) under Shutdown settings

2. Disable Startup Programs

By default, Windows 10 loads plenty of programs you may not actually need. Add to that the programs you manually install and which may autorun by default, and the impact on startup can be big. So, roll up your sleeves and sweep out the programs you don’t need from startup.

To disable startup programs:

Open the Task Manager
- Use the Ctrl + Shift + Esc Keyboard Shortcut
- Or right-click on the Taskbar and click on Task Manager
Click the Startup tab
Right-click on the program and Disable it

Note: The Task Manager in Windows 10 shows you the “Startup impact” of programs. Optimize boot times by disabling all non-essential High impact programs.

3. Tone Down the Special Effects

If you like the many little special effects in Windows 10, this setting isn’t for you. But if you’re using an older computer, you may want to help it out a bit, and one of the best ways to do this is to ditch the special effects.
It’s surprisingly easy:

Right-click on the Start button
Click on System
Go to Advanced system settings > System Properties > Performance
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on Settings
Choose Adjust for best performance in the Visual Effects tab

Note: If there are some special effects that you particularly like, such as smooth edges for fonts, choose to Customize effects instead (but try to leave most of them out).

4. Clean Up Your Disk

Using the built-in Disk Cleanup utility regularly can further improve your Windows boot time. Don’t expect too big of a boost, but since you free up some disk space in the process, why not do it? Disk Cleanup cleans up temporary files and other junk files you don’t need and is a quick alternative to the many more advanced startup cleaners available on Windows.

How to use it:

Press the Windows Key
Type in Disk Cleanup to open it
Choose the types of files you want to delete

Note: To save up GBs worth of space, choose to delete Temporary files, which may include both system and program files. You won’t be missing these for long, though, since Windows will usually start recreating them the next time you log in.

5. Decrease the Boot Menu Time-Out

Noticed the boot menu at start-up, just before Windows 10 begins to load? Then you’re probably dual-booting two versions of Windows or two different operating systems.

While you do need this screen to choose your OS, you don’t have to put up with it for 30 seconds, which is the default setting. You can reduce the boot menu time-out and save 20 seconds or more on dual-booting Windows.

How to do it:

Press the Windows + R Keys
Type in SystemPropertiesAdvanced
Click on Settings in Startup and Recovery
Change Time to display list of operating systems to 5 seconds

Note: 5 seconds should be enough for a fast boot, but you can choose a longer interval if that makes it easier.

6. Check Your Power Options

Power plans are a useful feature for Windows laptop users, but if you’re on desktop, you may not need one. Even if you’re using a laptop, you may still disable your power plan to speed up your computer’s performance, and by implication, squeeze the startup time some more.

Change your power plan:

Open the Control Panel through the Windows button on the Taskbar
Go to Hardware and Sound > Power Options
Switch from a power-saving or balanced plan to a High-Performance plan

7. Keep Your Hard Disk Tidy

It’s not just the quality of your hard disk (and its transfer speed) that influences your operating system’s boot time, but also its tidiness. We’ve already talked about cleaning up temporary files, but file defragmentation can also be a problem, one that occurs over time as you use your computer.

Windows 10 automatically defrags files for you every week or so, or at least it should. But if your computer is getting slow, you’d want to check the fragmentation level using the built-in disk optimization tool. If more than 5-10% of your disk is fragmented, you should defrag.

Probably the quickest way to defrag:

Type in defrag in the Taskbar
Open the disk optimization tool
Choose the hard drive where Windows 10 is installed and Analyze it
Click Optimize to defrag it

Final Thoughts

So, which of the tips above will you try first? You may want to start with the startup-related settings, and only then tone down the special effects or defrag files. Unless you’re double-booting, your Windows 10 shouldn’t take longer than a few seconds to load.

If you’re losing 3-4 seconds on each boot and you’re booting your computer 50 times a month (including restarts), that adds up to 150-200 seconds or roughly 3 minutes. That means over 30 minutes every year.

Why waste half an hour every year staring at the Windows logo when in just a few seconds you could tick a few settings that make all the difference?