Improved Startup Delayer App is Still a Gem

I’m always on the hunt for freeware and open source applications and utilities, and one of my favorite finds from last year, which I wrote about here, was Startup Delayer. I’ve been steadily using this utility, and recommend it highly to Windows users frustrated with slow boot times. It’s also been recently updated.


Here are some ways to get the most out of it, and what’s new.


As Simon noted in his weekend post on spring cleaning his Dell laptop,  it’s important to regularly clean up and optimize PCs running Windows. All versions of the operating system have a way of hogging more system resources and doing things you didn’t ask for over time. Startup Delayer aims squarely at the long-standing problem of how long it takes to boot a Windows PC.

If you’ve used Windows for some time, you’re probably already familiar with removing stray applications that make their way into your list of startup processes. (I use Glary Utilities, a piece of freeware that Simon mentioned, to do this when I want to completely remove applications.) Adobe and many other software vendors are notorious about sneaking their applications into the list uninvited.

Startup Delayer provides flexibility on this front, though. It allows you to still have particular applications load when you start your computer, but you can set delays for when you want particular ones to load. I described the easy process for doing so here.  You basically just drag lines representing your startup applications to the left and to the right in a horizontal white space to set the load times.  It’s very easy.

After using Startup Delayer for months, I’ve set my instant messaging application (this makes the biggest difference), a pop-up calendar that I use, and a photo application I use every day to load some 6-10 minutes after bootup. They’re nicely spaced out too, so when they do load, they’re not crashing into each other.

That’s the primary problem that Startup Delayer solves: When you boot a Windows PC, if you have multiple applications loading automatically, they crash into each other and you end up staring at the hourglass, frustrated. I don’t need my instant messenger as soon as I start my system, but I want e-mail and the web quickly.

There are several bug fixes in the new version of Startup Delayer, and there also is an uninstall routine in place now that will take you back to the list of startup processes you had specified before using the application. If you’ve ever held your head in your hands while waiting for your applications to become available, give Startup Delayer a try.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post