Web User Masterclass
13 - 26 November 2019 65
TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
More advanced tips for when you’re feeling braveUse portable applications
Windows startup times get longer as
your PC gets older. One of the main
reasons is that PCs tend to become
stuffed with software, which drains
resources and slows Windows down.
The solution is to install as little
software as possible and to use portable
or web-based apps instead. For
example, use LibreOffice portable
(bit.ly/libop488) rather than installing it.
Also use Microsoft Office web apps
such as Word and Excel at onedrive.live
.com instead of installing Office, and
GIMP portable (bit.ly/gimp488) and
Audacity portable (bit.ly/aud 488 ) to
edit photos and audio files.
Not all software developers make
portable versions of their apps, and
some can be hard to find, but there are
hundreds of apps to explore at
portableapps.com/apps.
Delay online storage tools
Cloud-storage services such as
OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox
are very useful but they start
automatically with Windows and take a
few minutes to sync. The first thing they
do is scan your hard drive for files and
compare them with the online versions.
This taxes the processor, hard drive and
memory, slowing Windows startup.
For a faster startup, stop your cloud
services running automatically and run
them manually when you need them.
With OneDrive, for example, right-click
the cloud icon in the notification area
and select Settings. Click the Startup
tab and remove the tick next to ‘Start
OneDrive automatically when I sign into
Windows’. When you need it, click Start,
type OneDrive and click to run it.
Google Drive and Dropbox are similar.
Right-click the taskbar icon and go to
settings or preferences, where you can
choose to let them start with Windows
or not. Disable this for maximum speed.
Alternatively, right-click a program
and select ‘Send to’, then ‘Desktop
(create shortcut)’ and drag the
shortcut to the Startup folder.Disable Startup apps
Windows 10 stores startup programs
in the Settings app. Open it and
choose Apps, Start-up. In Windows 7,
press Windows+R, enter msconfig
and select the Startup tab.
Here you’ll see a list of apps that
start with Windows, as well as the
impact they have on your PC’s startup
time. Nothing here is essential to
Windows, so you can disable anything
you don’t need.
Another way to access the same list
is to right-click the taskbar, select
Task Manager and Click the Start-up
tab. You can see each item’s CPU
usage and disk activity here, too. If
you can’t see these columns, right-
click a column header and add them.
The figures show which startup apps
use most resources, and therefore
which will deliver the biggest startup
speed boost when disabled.
The best tool for tweaking Windows
startup is Autoruns (bit.ly/autor488).
Unzip it, right-click autoruns.exe and
run it as an administrator. Right-click
any ‘file not found’ items (in yellow)
and delete them so that Windows
doesn’t waste time looking for them
during startup. Red items are
unknown but may be essential, so
don’t just delete them.
Check each entry for obvious signs
that the item is unnecessary, perhaps
because it belongs to software you’ve
uninstalled or never use. If you’re not
sure what something is, leave it alone
because you can break Windows if
you delete the wrong things.Enable fast startup
You can enable fast startup in
Windows 10 but this has its pros and
cons. To activate it, open Control
Panel, Power Options, ‘Choose what
the power buttons do’, then click
‘Change settings that are currently
unavailable’. Tick the box ‘Turn on fast
startup (recommended)’. If you don’t
have this option, you can’t change it.
When fast startup is enabled, the
PC starts quickly, as you’d expect.
This is because when it shuts down, it
partially logs you out of your account
and then hibernates. It starts up faster
next time because many of the items
Windows needs are loaded already.If you like to tweak BIOS settings,
boot from other devices or use other
boot features, note that those options
are difficult or impossible to access
with fast startup enabled. What’s
more, you can no longer shut down
your PC and switch it on again to fix
any problems you’re having. Click
Start, Power, Restart instead.Clear the Start-up folder
If you use Windows 7 or earlier, you’ll
see a Start-up folder in the Start, All
Programs menu. Windows 10 hides
this, but if you enable ‘Hidden items’
on Explorer’s View menu, it’s in:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\
Start Menu\Programs\StartUp.
Open it and check it for programs,
because anything that appears there
runs automatically when Windows
starts. Nothing in it is essential, so you
can click and drag any programs to
the desktop and then run them
manually if you ever need them.
Adding a shortcut to a program in
this folder is an easy way to ensure
that it starts with Windows. Find a
program and copy it to the Start-upDon’t let online storage start with folder to run it automatically.
Windows if you want a speedier startup
Fast startup makes booting quicker, but
boot features are trickier to accessAutoruns shows all items that load with
Windows – don’t delete anything vital