Windows 7: Slow Startup

Ok, so when I boot up my laptop, and when it gets to desktop, it takes time for everything to stabilise and windows is slow and if i try opening firefox or anything it takes long and most of the time it becoms unresponsive. Maybe because too many programs are starting up.

Here is a screen of 'startup' from msconfig. Could somebody please tell me which programs I can untick. Thanks!

General rule of thumb is disable anything you don't actively use at startup, or even close to startup. For example Adobe kicks in when needed anyway; that doesn't need to run at startup.

Some people also disable Synaptics, which is just to do with the configuration of your touchpad, and if you never tinker with its settings then you don't need it running in the background at startup; it can be accessed through 'Mouse' in Control Panel anyway.

Chrome3 and VTimer are related to S3 screentoys which, not being familiar with, I would say leave running in case disabling them completely disables your screen. (Highly unlikely, and chances are it's just a utility suite of software to do with your screen settings, but better safe than sorry).

For others I'd disable in a heartbeat, Java Update, Google Update and Office. Depending on your frequency of bluetooth use as well, I'd disable the bluetooth tray. It's one of those things that opens if you need it anyway, for example if you plug in a bluetooth dongle.

Thanks for reply mate, also is there anything else I can do to generally speed up my laptop?

You can possibly look at limiting which services run at startup; these are similar to the startup processes but are mostly invisible and take up very little processing space to begin with. It's only for the most fussy of users and not for casual messing; several services are interlinked and stopping one that you don't need doesn't necessarily mean that you won't be stopping a service that you do need.

If you want to access it simply open up Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del; or right-click taskbar and select 'Start Task Manager'); then head to the Services tab. From here you can't do anything except for see which services are running or stopped, but in the lower right the further 'Services' button calls up a new window allowing you right-click each service individually and choose from a series of options.
In the Properties for any service you can see the service name, a description of what it does, and toggle whether to have it startup:

Automatic (as soon as the machine boots),
Automatic with a delayed start (starts up with the machine, but not the second that Windows loads, so that individual services load mostly separately from one another, theoretically taking the strain off the CPU)
Manual (services will only start when specifically required; for example you turn the Printers services to this setting, and it will only activate when you try to print a document)
Disabled (speaks for itself)


As I say, this is not for the faint of heart nor for mucking about. You can seriously impact your machine's performance by disabling services, or render it inoperable in the worst case scenario. I recommend using a good services guide such as at The Elder Geek Home
You can also use Google to research each one, or in the Properties window for service, click on the 'Dependencies' tab to see which services rely on that particular one, and also which ones it relies on in order to function.


I strongly recommend only researching this method first, though. Research first, act upon it another day if you still feel you can bleed some more performance out of your machine.

If you want to speed up your laptop some more, run disk cleanup and run disk defragmenter. Don't use third party registry cleaners or any other cleaner. Also, make sure you let Windows 7 have some idle time. Make sure that every once and awhile, you give it about 2 hours of idle, because Windows 7 runs stuff when it is idle that helps speed up Windows and your programs.

As previously mentioned, it's usually not a good idea to tinker with services. One of our experts (gregrocker) has a great tutorial on how to clean up factory bloatware. Bloatware is best described as "stuff" installed by the manufacturer that can seriously slow down a computer. He also goes into some detail on what startup items can be safely disabled - basically everything except your security suite (antivirus, antispyware, firewall.)

Clean Up Factory Bloatware

Another informative tutorial by one of the Admins (Brink) offers several suggestions on what you can do to optimize Windows 7 performance. Not everything will apply to you but there's a lot of good info here as well.

Optimize Windows 7

I will mirror what marsmimar said about disabling services. If you know what you are doing, there are certainly some services that you can disable, but it likely won't speed up your boot. You are on the right track with disabling startup programs that are unnecessary. For a simple interface to show what is making your startup slow, I would try Soluto. While I do not use it to manage the startup, it was helpful to visualize what is delaying the boot.

https://www.soluto.com/

A Guy