Why does my vista take so long to boot

Not all programs that load themselves when your computer starts appear in the Startup folder, however. Take a look at the Notification area of your Taskbar, which is on the bottom right-hand corner of your desktop next to the clock, to see if there are a lot of icons there. Most of these icons are for programs that run in background, and with all of them starting up when you turn on your computer, it will definitely slow it down. Many of these programs can be safely prevented from starting up automatically, so you only load them as and when you need to.

Most of the time you can right-click the icon and either open the program or go straight to the program's options or preferences, and from there clear a box that says something like 'Run this program when Windows starts'. If there are any programs that you don't need any more at all, go ahead and uninstall them to get an extra speed boost.

Result: After deleting four shortcuts from the Startup folder and cutting down the Notification icons from a massive 19 down to seven, we saw a huge improvement in the computer's start-up speed. Not all programs give the option to prevent them from automatically starting up.

To disable more stubborn programs, we went in to the powerful Msconfig utility. Before using this you should create a Restore point so you can revert your PC back to its former settings should anything go wrong. Click Start and type msconfig. Click the Startup tab and you'll see a list of programs, the name of the manufacturer of each program, and the program's path where it's kept on your hard drive.

Using all this information you can tell whether these programs are essential to making your PC run properly. Windows Client. Sign in. United States English. Ask a question. Quick access. Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. Asked by:. Archived Forums. Mail Merge with Attachments. Download Tutorials Video.

Save Emails and Attachments. Download email messages and file attachments from Gmail to your Google Drive. Google Forms Email Notifications. They load from the hard drive, they eat up processor cycles, and they take up precious system memory.

Because Windows Vista optimizes itself to store the most-executed code on the fastest and most accessible portion of the hard drive, the load time can theoretically decrease with regular usage.

Unfortunately, that notion is defeated by actual, realistic usage. As you install programs, many of them come with their own services or start their own processes on bootup.

Before long, Windows Vista demands a solid two minutes of your time from the moment you push the power button until the OS becomes useable.