Hi everyone,
Windows 10 gives you a handy way to not only see what is running at
startup (that is, programs that automatically run when you login) but
also see the impact they have on the startup time, and disable items you
don't want starting up. Do be careful here as although disabling items
should make the computer startup faster, if you disable something
important, then you will lose access to that functionality. For
instance, if you rely on the NVDA screen reader and you disable it then
it won't run at startup, or if you have an anti-virus or anti-malware
program running and disable it, then it also won't work (note that if
you don't specifically have an anti-virus running, Windows 10 includes
Windows Defender which is an anti-virus program).
While the best way of managing whether an individual program runs on
startup - on any platform really whether it's Windows 10 or your phone -
is to find the program responsible and see if it has a setting to stop
components loading at boot and / or remaining in memory.
Not every program does, so in Windows 10 what you can do is the following:
1. Press CONTROL+SHIFT+ESCAPE to bring up the task manager
2. Press TAB once to get to the "More details" link
3. Press ENTER
4. Press CONTROL+TAB three times to get to the "Startup" tab
5. Press TAB twice to get to the list of items.
6. Press RIGHT ARROW three times to get to the "startup impact" column
7. Press ENTER twice to sort by startup impact (once will sort lowest at
the top but we really want to find the higher impact items)
8. Press DOWN ARROW to get into the list and move through it.
When you find an item you want to disable:
9. Press the APPLICATIONS KEY
10. Press the DOWN ARROW once to disable
11. Press ENTER
(Repeat as needed - pressing ENTER a second time enables something
that's been disabled).
If you want to find a program to run it and see if it has an option to
disable it internally, then from that context menu is "Open file
location" which opens file explorer on the executable so you can just
press ENTER to start the program. you can also search online to see
what something is which is handy.
Note that this will affect how long it takes from when you log in (type
your pin or password etc) to when everything that's loading finishes and
you are able to use the computer normally. Sometimes you can start to
use the computer before things have loaded, though it may be slower but
in any case, knowing what is running and why is quite useful.
Kind regards
Quentin.
--
22 Point
Web: http://www.22point.com.au
Check out our "Making Windows 10 Easy" eBooks and award winning app, RapiTap!
