Optimizing Your Boot Times with MSConfig

MSConfig is a great little utility to tweak your machine’s boot up routine. With just a few tweaks, you can increase the loading speed on your home, work, or just any type of PC!

In this article, I’m going to show you how to run MSConfig’s tool, and I will guarantee that the speed of your computers boot will increase (Providing you’ve not used MSConfig before that is).

Getting Started

Microsoft were smart to provide Windows users with an easy way to pick what programs they want to run upon boot. In this day and age, many computing software, ranging from Windows Live Messenger to Steam, automatically make it so that when your computer starts up, so does their program.

This is great… if you want your computer to load like a snail! Having so many apps start up at boot, consuming resources, is a sure-fire way to sabotage performance. I’m going to teach you about how to open MSConfig’s tool, manage it, and make sure you turn off all the programs you do not want, nor need.

Step #1

To start with, we’re going to open up the tool that will provide us with the capabilities of speeding our PC boot times up! I am working on a Windows 7 system, but I will provide information for Windows XP users.

For users on a Windows Vista/7 System:

• Click start.
• Click on the search bar, and type in; “msconfig”.
• Press enter!

For users on a Windows XP/lower System:

• Click start.
• Find the tool named ‘Run’ and click it.
• Click on the bar, and type in; “msconfig”.
• Press enter/OK!
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• Step #2

  Hopefully a tool named ‘System Configuration’ opens up for you. Our next step is for you to change the Start Up Selection from “Normal” to “Selective Startup” if your computer hasn’t already done so. Some companies make it by default run all your programs, but obviously we don’t want that any more.
  After this, we’ll need to move to the “Start Up” tab, which will allow us to do what we freely wish. Please don’t be worried once opening this tab, I know it can be daunting. Just relax, and move onto the next step!
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• Step #3

  This is most possibly the most important step when using MSConfig. Microsoft made it so that you can turn anything on and off. This can be seen as a positive and negative, but we’re only going to touch programs we know, so it’s all going to be fine!
   
  First, we’ll have to stretch out the Command bar so that we can see that what we’re editing is only a program file/user file. Going into the C:\ drive may damage our start-ups!
  We’ll have a look at the Startup Item tab too, to see the item name of which we are loading and closing. As you can see from my system, I have Realtek HD Audio Manager in my first row. This is a key program/file that needs to open on boot; it manages my sound. You can see to the left, there is a little tick box. Realtek has this ticked, meaning it will start up on boot. That’s what we want!
  If we gaze to the third, fourth, and fifth row, we have three programs that the user has installed. Steam, Windows Live Messenger and Origin. Now personally, I do not play or communicate with Steam all the time, nor WLM or play Battlefield with Origin [Editors’s note: For shame, sir! For shame!], so I’m going to disable them starting up when my PC does. I’ll untick them from my list — this will mean they will no longer start up on boot.
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• There are going to be things that I want to make sure start up though, such as my F-Secure Management Agent (This is my anti-virus software, provided by TalkTalk). This keeps my computer protected at all times, and in the slight-possible event that my computer gets hacked on boot, I’ll need my anti-virus/protection program on at all times. We’re going to keep this ticked. Here is a list of types of programs you may want to keep ticked on start-up.

  • Anti-Virus software.
  • Audio Systems/Managers.
  • Cloud-Hosting services (Dropbox, etc).
  • Software Updaters (Java, Adobe, etc).

  I would say they are your top priority when starting your PC, as many of them can be used on start up. You cam proceed to tick and untick any other wanted/un-wanted programs on your Startup now.
  
  

  The Final Stage!

  The last stage, is checking over what you’ve selected and unselected in stage 3. We want to make sure that your computer has all the anti-virus/audio etc systems running on boot to make sure we’re protected, secure and still happy at the same time.
  Once we’ve checked over, we can hit Apply, then OK. Upon doing so a little menu bar will appear asking if you want to restart or not. If you’re wanting to see your changes straight away, go ahead and hit restart, otherwise you can continue using your PC as normal.
  And that’s it! Easy as cake, and your computer should now boot up at least a few seconds quicker than before! Just make sure you have ticked all the good programs, and unticked all the memory eating/un-useful ones!