Nobody likes slow startup times.
Let's talk to Wes about some of the symptoms
and sources of slow startup times. Common!
Hey, Wes.
Hey, Zach.
Can we talk about the symptoms
and the sources of slow startup times?
Sure, sounds like a good conversation.
I’m guessing that one of the symptoms is, it's slow.
That really is.
That really is the main symptom.
You know, is that when you push power on the computer,
your Windows machine boots up,
but it just seems to take a long time.
And in today's day and age,
if you don't have mechanical drives,
if you have solid-state drives,
that boot process should be fairly fast.
And if it's not, that's a tell-tale sign
that we've got something going on with the start-up.
That spinning cheerio of death here.
That's absolutely, yeah.
The little spinning cheerio as I call it,
in the Windows boot screen.
So jumping right in,
what are some of the causes of these slow startup times?
Well, it could be a number of things.
If you have a traditional mechanical hard drive,
it could be things like file fragmentation.
We’ve talked about it.
That's right, we had an episode on that.
But more specifically, what I want to focus on
when it comes to slow startup times, if you will,
are the fact that it could be an unnecessary application.
And what I mean by unnecessary is
it doesn't mean the application itself is unnecessary.
Let me rephrase that.
Is that the application is starting during the boot process
and that's the unnecessary part.
- It's not the fact that we don't need the application. - It’s running in the background.
Yeah, and it starts running in the background.
The moment we push power on the computer,
the operating system goes to load.
The other thing could be services in the background.
Now let's kind of differentiate
if you don't know what the difference
between an application and a service is.
A service is something that happens in the background.
It's a process that's running that the computer takes care of,
that the Windows Operating System takes care of.
And I don't need to interact with it.
You don't need to interact with it.
We can but majority of the time, we don't interact with it.
An application is something that we launch, we interact with.
So, one or two things within an application that says,
Hey, I need to start up the moment Windows does.
Or we've got a service
that's starting up the moment Windows does.
And if you get too many of these,
then what ends up happening
is you end up getting this very, very slow start time
and that can end up being a problem.
That's not something that we want.
We want to make sure that we you know,
in order to optimize our boot time,
make sure that we can like if not eliminate that,
reduce it down to more of an acceptable level.
So, we need to play detective?
Yes.
And find these applications and services
that we can maybe disable for the time being.
We have a faster boot up.
Yep, definitely.
Good, well let's take a look.
Okay, sure.
So, I'm in Windows 10 here
and I'm going to use an application
by right-clicking on the taskbar called Task Manager.
It’s an oldy but goody.
It's been around for a very long time,
and we're going to open it up,
and we're going to take a look at it.
There's no applications there whatsoever.
Alright, so I did a great job.
- I showed you how to optimize... - You did, and everything is fine.
Short story.
Now, this is what a user will see
if they have never launched Task Manager.
I use it quite a lot.
So, what I will typically have is already pressed
the More Details option here
and it gives us a lot more details like it says.
And specifically, what I'm looking at,
if we look fourth over from the left to right,
fourth over is the Startup Tab.
And if we choose the Startup Tab,
what you're going to see is exactly what it sounds like.
These are applications that are actually starting
the moment the Windows Operating starts up.
We can see what the status is right here by the third column.
And it says enable.
Every one of these is enabled.
Then we can also see what the startup impact is.
And you'll see that some of them have
a very high startup impact,
which means they can really slow it down
or they have a very low impact.
Now, I will tell you that if you see any security software,
like for instance this Windows Security notification
from Microsoft Corp, leave it alone.
That's right.
That's your security software and it doesn't matter
how bad that slows down your startup process,
you need that.
Because in fact, you really need that
before the operating system loads up
because it's important to keep malware off of your systems
or identify it as soon as possible.
So, what we're seeing in here,
I wouldn't disable one of these services.
But if you take a look at this OneDrive,
OneDrive is something that Microsoft uses as our storage,
our cloud-based storage solutions.
And ever since Windows 8.1,
they've really been encouraging people
to create a Microsoft account
so that they can save their settings
and files up to OneDrive.
Zach, I'm not using OneDrive right now
and if we look at that startup impact...
We can disable that.
We can.
So, when I do that, I'm going to select it.
Notice the disabled option down here
in the lower right-hand corner is no longer greyed out.
That gives me the ability to do exactly that.
Notice that the status in the status column it says disabled.
Now that doesn't disable OneDrive.
At any one point, if I wanted to launch OneDrive,
I could type right here in the search engine, OneDrive,
and it would open up.
That just says One Drive, just stay on the bench.
We don't need to throw you in the game yet.
When we’re starting up.
When we need you, we'll call you to play on the field.
Got it.
So, that's one great way.
The other way here is that
sometimes we have services that are starting,
and we don't want them to start.
A couple of different ways that you could see this.
You could see this from the Processes tab
and the Processes tab kind of groups everything together,
really based on more of a hierarchical tree, right?
And by the way, Skype is in here too, but it's not measured.
I'm not exactly sure what the startup impact is here.
But if you're not using that,
you can probably disable that on the startup tab as well.
But here's another thing.
Notice we have the Spooler Subsystem App.
Alright, this is when you need to print to a print, alright?
So, this is an example of a service that I don't need,
and I certainly don't need it from starting up
every time I launch Windows.
Now, what we can do is we can use another utility
to identify those services that are starting up,
the ones that we deem with a little bit of research,
got to make sure that you don't need them.
And we can disable them from the startups side.
Now, we want to be careful
because Windows services are needed
to perform vital functions within the operating system.
So, there is a way that you can kind of disable these,
but in the same sense you're not really disabling.
You're just saying,
- “You know what, just don't be a part of the process.” - You're quieting them down. That's right.
Sit on the bench until we need you.
We’ll call you when we need you.
We’ll call your number.
- Have some Gatorade too. - That's right.
So, let me show you how we do that.
So, one of the ways that you can do that
is you can actually use another program
and that's called the Services Console.
Now, I could just type services and the app comes up
and that's perfectly fine,
but you can also add the dot MSC.
Again, you don't have to today.
Windows is smart enough to know,
“Hey, I want the Services Console.”
Now, I'm going to keep the...
notice that Spooler Service is there.
I'm going to go ahead
and keep that open for now just for a second here.
And what we want to do
is we want to look for the Print Spooler Service.
I just happen to know that that's the Print Spooler Service.
I would encourage anybody before you disable anything in here,
do your research, Google it on the internet,
and make sure that you are okay to disable it.
Easy way to do this,
click the name column and type the letter P.
And there's our principal right there.
There it is.
Alright, and you can see
what it tells us and what this does.
This service spools print jobs
and handles interaction with a printer.
I'm not printing guess what?
I really don't need that to start up during our startup process.
So, if we double click this Spooler Service, right here,
notice that it's got what's known as the Startup type.
And there's a series of Startup types.
Now, I'm not printing now
and if I think I'm never going to print from this computer,
really I can just disable.
All right. Now we got to be careful with disabling the services.
When you disable it,
you're not telling the player to sit on the bench.
You're telling the player,
“That's okay, go to the locker room
and you can go back to the hotel,
we don't need you in this game.”
And it's not going to run when you need it to, alright?
Because you disabled it.
So, another way that we can do
that is notice the top column here.
Automatic says, “Hey, the moment I push Power,
start the service.”
Which is what it's done.
Manually says, “Don't start the service till I need you.”
However, I've seen
that the Manual sometimes doesn't start up either.
So, what I want to say is, do the Automatic Delay.
Automatic Delay says, “Just don't be present at boot time.”
There's nothing I need to print
while the computer is starting up
because I can't even see the desktop anyway.
Very good.
So, then we can choose Apply or Okay.
If you choose Apply it just keeps the windows open, alright?
Oh, and it looks like it's not allowing me to do this.
Oh, it's probably because I haven't stopped it.
Let me go ahead and stop the service here
and then choose Apply.
Oh, delayed auto flag not could not be set.
Interestingly enough,
it looks like I might have to turn around
and choose this to be manual as well.
There we go.
So, this is a Manual Startup type
and interestingly enough and it's good to kind of see this
because there’s some that they won't let you disable them.
So, for instance, something like our Windows Defender
and I believe Windows Defender Firewall is in here.
Notice that it's greyed out.
They don't let you do this because...
You shouldn’t.
And you shouldn't anyways because you could potentially,
obviously ruin the security of your system here.
Manual here, just means again,
like I said, that means
that if you need the service, and you go to print,
you should be able to print as long as the service is,
you know, will start up.
If you end up having some printing issues on this
then you're going to want to go back in
and change it to Automatic but since I'm not printing,
I'm doing this from the concept of,
“Hey, we're not putting it all from this machine.
I don't need that service.
I certainly don't need it starting up
every time my computer starts up.”
And that is a very easy way to just kind of identify
maybe some of the services
that are unnecessarily starting up during boot process,
how you would identify an application
that maybe is having a very heavy impact
in your boot process.
One last thing I'd like to show you, let me go ahead
and close down our Services Console in Task Manager.
There is another utility out there and it's called MSConfig.
It's the System Configuration Utility.
This is a good way to run a diagnostic more than anything else.
There is a way that you can do what's known
as a Diagnostic startup.
Notice it says Selective startup, Load system services,
Load startup items,
and don't worry about the boot configuration data
beyond the scope of this episode.
But if I say Load basic devices and services only,
then what it's going to do
is it's going to any third-party application that I've installed,
any third- party driver that maybe is going to a device
that I don't need during my boot process
is not going to be loaded.
And if you notice that you change it
to that Diagnostic startup,
if you reboot your machine, it boots right up
then chances are you've got some kind of application
and you've got some kind of maybe
piece of software in the background
that's trying to load up in the notification area.
And then this, this might be one of the first things
that you do and then you can go on a hunt.
You can kind of find out with Task Manager
to really isolate down what service or application is,
that you want to disable during the boot process.
And ultimately, you can optimize it and make it a little faster.
Yeah, I love that bit.
That's like a shortcut for Google to do that.
That's Sis Config, is that what it’s called?
It's called MSConfig or System Configuration Utility.
They'll launch the same thing.
Wonderful.
Hey, thank you, Wes.
Absolutely.