How to make your personal computer boot up faster

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): I have to admit that, in the past few months, this column has been dealing with rather technical and enterprise-oriented topics. This time let us shift gear and look at something more practical, something that is more relevant to a wider group of audience. Let us look at something that both techies and non-techies have to do before they can start using their computer: That is, to boot it up.

Why boot up? Michael G., a long-time friend of mine, recently went to Singapore to get himself a gorgeous Toshiba Portege. Powered by a Mobile Pentium running at 300 MHz, the machine was quite zippy. Michael then started installing tons of utilities and drivers, including Norton Utilities and Zip Drive utilities. A couple of days later, he called me and complained, "This notebook is now very slow."

He complained that the screen painted very slowly, almost one line at a time. It was like staring at the screen of a 286 machine that ran Windows 95 with only 4 MB of RAM. Had the processor really lost its power? Was the system damaged in any way? Michael wanted to make sure. I figured, however, that what he perceived as a significant decrease in the notebook's speed was actually the long boot-up time.

When the machine first came out from the factory, it was a clean one. There were probably just a few programs that would be loaded automatically each time he booted it up or restarted Windows. Once additional utilities and drivers were installed, the computer had to load each of them before it was ready for him to launch his productivity tool--such as Microsoft Word.

I told Michael to check the StartUp folder in his system, and my suspicion was confirmed. He had more than a dozen items on the list in the folder. This meant that each time his notebook--fast as it was--had to load more than a dozen programs and utilities before it handed control over to him. In the process, while the computer was busy loading the programs, the data that went to the screen also trickled, giving him the impression that the machine had lost its breath.

The StartUp Folder

It is really recommended to keep the list of programs that Windows has to load during the boot up process to the minimum, particularly if you have a notebook. That way, you will be able to start working right away once it is powered up, and this will also save battery power. If you do not use your Zip Drive all the time, its utilities need not be loaded. If you do not use Office Shortcut bar (and, to tell the truth, very few of us do), just throw it away.

How do you access the StartUp folder? Click on Windows' Start button, click on Settings and then Taskbar & Start Menu. The Taskbar Properties dialog box will appear. Click on the Start Menu Programs tab, and then on the Advanced button. You will get an Explorer-like dialog box as shown in the accompanying picture. Click on the Programs folder on the left pane. When the list of the subfolders appears, click on StartUp (you may have to scroll down a little if your menu list has grown quite long). Once StartUp is selected, you can see the contents on the right pane.

The list that you see under StartUp is basically the list of programs and utilities that Windows automatically load each time it starts. Some of them had better be there. Acrobat Reader, for example, is necessary if you often download and read PDF files off the Internet. My system has QuickShelf 95 on the list because I use Microsoft Bookshelf 95 quite a lot (I like its dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia).

A lot of other programs also like to add their own shortcut icons on the System Tray, believing that we will need them and use them. If you do not send or receive phone calls with your PC and modem, there is no reason to include in the StartUp list the answering machine utility that comes with your modem.

Some programs will be activated automatically during the boot- up process. Anti-virus programs have to check your system every time you boot, and therefore you will not find the command in the StartUp list. To stop them from loading and running automatically, you will have to go to their individual Setup or Configuration utility and uncheck options such as "Load whenever Windows starts".

How do we trim the list? It may be a better idea to first create a storage folder for the items that you want to take out of the StartUp list, as who knows you may need them again later. To create the new folder is very easy: Make sure that StartUp is still selected, then click on the File menu item in the Exploring StartUp dialog box, and select Folder to create a new folder. The new subfolder will be located under StartUp. Let us give it the name "Temporary Storage". Then, use the drag and drop technique to move the commands in the StartUp folder to the Temporary Storage folder. For fun, you can even experiment by moving the entire list into the new folder and restart Windows. You will be surprised to see how fast your system boots this time.

However, as mentioned above, some commands should exist in the StartUp list. Based on your need, you can decide which ones.

Finally, since you will need to restart Windows, here is a trick to shorten the process: As usual, click on Start and then Shutdown. When the Shutdown Windows dialog box appears, press and hold the Shift key before you click on Restart. This will tell the computer to reboot without going through the time-consuming BIOS reconfiguration step. (zatni@cbn.net.id)