Even
though Microsoft do their best to lower the boot time with each successive release of
the Windows OS, after a while things will tend to slow down a bit as more
applications
get set to load at start-up unnecessarily, whether you wanted them to or not.
This guide will take you through
configuring Windows 9x, Me, 2000 & XP to load as quickly as possible &
also have the benefit of loading with more memory available for use.
Since most of the more recent versions of
Microsoft Windows are covered on this article, we recommend Win9x and ME users
to keep reading, while Win2k and XP users will want to skip some of the info
that follows and go directly here, where their
OSes are covered. The third part of the article covers general/miscellaneous
settings that should work for all of the OSes aforementioned.
The first place to look for items being
loaded is the Start Menu, this goes for all Operating Systems.
Click on Start, Programs then
the Startup folder. Right click on & Delete any
items that are unnecessary to load at Startup. Unfortunately not every
Application that is to be initiated at Startup gets displayed here. There are
several ways that these Applications can be found & disabled & the rest
of the guide will cover this on an OS specific basis to account for differences
that exist.
Click
on Start, Run type in msconfig & hit Enter. Now
select the General tab. This tab contains a few bootup minimizing
options.
The
first thing you should do is set the Startup selection type to Selective
startup & Untick Process Config.sys/Autoexec.bat/Winstart.bat
file. At this stage you should be getting over DOS & other such legacy
support. Though should you require DOS Drivers or some other
environmental parameters to be loaded on your system then be sure to leave the
appropriate .bat file option Ticked.
Should
you have left any of the .bat options Ticked use the Config.sys
& Autoexec.bat tab to delete all unnecessary statements. If you have
neither the Config.sys &/or Autoexec.bat options Ticked
you should delete both the respective file from your root directory, e.g. C:\.
Now
select the Startup tab.
For optimal
bootup time Untick all unnecessary
items listed here (With the exception of SystemTray).
A good
listing of Programs that may appear here can be found at
this page. This should help you decide on what else you can Untick if
you aren’t too sure about some of them. Once you have finished this select Apply
then hit Ok. You will need to Reboot your system for any changes
to take effect. Further into the guide I’ll cover how to delete Unticked
options from being displayed here altogether.
