Make your PC start faster than ever

All PCs get slower as they age. Sometimes this is caused by hard drives degrading, but more often it’s because we expect them to run more demanding software, or we let them get cluttered with junk. My seven-year-old HP Envy Rove 20 PC, which came with Windows 8 but now runs Windows 10, is certainly feeling its age. It can sometimes take minutes to boot. I’d finally had enough, and decided to try all the methods that are meant to rejuvenate your system and make it start faster.

My strategy was to time how fast my PC booted in its current state, then see whether each method would cut this. My first boot, without any improvements, took 50.3 seconds, which is faster than it normally manages, but is still painfully slow.

I timed how long it took from pressing the power button to browsing the