Elsewhere on the site, we have recommended looking through your startup items to remove entries that you don’t need. We’ve had a few questions about why this is, so we’ll explain in a little more detail.

There are a few reasons to optimize your startup items. The first has to do with the actual startup speed of your computer.

When you hit the power button on your PC, a whole series of operations are set in motion. Your hardware devices, your drivers, and other essential pieces of the PC are activated. After that you log into Windows – and things can start to drag. When you log into Windows, items are scheduled to start automatically and will run on their own. At the same time, Windows itself initiates many system processes (Windows Explorer, etc.).

Many of the programs that start automatically serve a useful purpose. Your anti-virus software, for example.

Other programs are less useful. Do you really need your music player to launch automatically? How about your photo editing software? There are many different examples, and it will entirely depend on your PC.

By including these items in your startup menu, the startup speeds are slowed down dramatically. Having a close look through these, and disabling the ones you don’t need will let your speed up boot times.

The second benefit to removing these items is for general computer speeds. The aforementioned programs not only clutter up the startup, but they will linger in the background and be a continual drain on resources.

These programs provide a variety of services – they could monitor for special keystrokes, allow quick access to tools, and so on. Again, the question is – do you really need it?

If not, cut down on unnecessary startup items. You’ll see improvement not just in the startup speeds, but in overall performance. Still not sure what to do? Let PC Health Advisor take care of it – check out our PC Health Advisor review for more details.

Related Posts:

• Fine-Tune Windows Settings to Maximize PC Speed
• Why Is My Computer Slow?
• How to Get a Faster Startup
• Make Your Computer Run Faster
• Make your Computer Uglier (and Faster)