It is aggravating when you turn on your computer it takes ten minutes or more for it to boot up. If there are a lot of programs set to automatically startup this could be cause of your slow boot times. But you don’t have to buy a new computer.

You can begin to improve how fast your computer boots up by performing some routine housecleaning. You should do this before you make any changes to your system. It is also important to back up of all the important information on your computer. Routine maintenance functions that are recommended to be performed on a regular basis include: emptying the temporary files and the Recycle bin, running up-to-date anti-spyware and anti-virus software, running the disk defragmenter and chkdsk utilities.

Begin by going to the start menu and clicking on “run”. Then type “msconfig”. This will open up the System Configuration utility. The default tab is the General Tab but you should click on the Startup Tab. Under this tab you will find all the programs that will run when your computer starts up. While some of them may be useful to automatically start many could be eliminated. One rule of thought is to only have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software automatically start up.

Just by unchecking a program you can stop it from automatically starting. Unchecking a program will not remove or un-install it from your computer. Once you have made your selections just click on “ok”. You will have to re-start your computer for the changes to take effect.