
Disabling apps with a Medium impact may also help boost your Windows load time. In reviewing which apps to kick out of your startup routine, you should first look at the ones that are rated as High impact, since disabling those will have the greatest effect on speeding up your system at startup. The higher the impact indicator, the longer a program takes to load, thereby increasing the time it takes for Windows to completely start. These indicators measure the impact a startup program has on your PC’s CPU and disk drive at startup. An app can be tagged with one of four different impact indicators: No impact, Low impact, Medium impact, and High impact.

Below the switch is an indicator for impact. The switch indicates a status of On or Off to tell you whether or not that app is currently in your startup routine. Here, you can see a list of all the apps that can start up automatically. In Windows 10, open Settings > Apps > Startup. Let’s check out the Settings option first. Let's see how the process works and how you can nix certain startup apps. If you have to run a program that gets kicked out of the startup process, you can still launch it manually from its Start menu or Start screen shortcut. Another option is to go through Task Manager, where you can scour the list of startup programs, research each specific program on the web to learn what it does, and then disable any apps you feel don't need to launch at startup.

You can go through the Settings screen, where you can see each app, its current status, and the effect if you opt to disable it from starting up automatically. Instead, you can check out your startup programs in a couple of other ways. That option is no longer available in Windows 10. In older versions of Windows, you’d open the System Configuration tool (msconfig) where you could see and deselect any programs you wanted to stop loading automatically. Windows has long offered a way for you to view and disable your startup programs.

However, many apps muscle their way into your startup routine with little or no reason.ĭon't worry. There are certain types of programs that you do want to start automatically, such as antivirus and webcam software. The more programs that launch at startup, the greater your PC is affected.

Why is that a problem? Startup apps unnecessarily chew up memory and resources, potentially hampering your PC's performance. Software programs such as Adobe Acrobat, iTunes, iCloud, and Spotify set themselves up to load as soon as you log into Windows. One of the most frustrating aspects of Windows is the ease with which applications can start up automatically when you turn on your PC, whether you need them to or not.
