What really speeds up boot time
Now that I’ve shown if the most common tips out there actually do (or don’t) improve boot time, let’s recap the most effective strategies for optimizing it:
Turn off start-up programs. Yes, I realize that this one is an ancient tip, but it still works surprisingly well. Although it doesn’t necessarily make your desktop appear any sooner (at least, not on more recent machines and with newer operating systems), it certainly allows you to launch and work with applications much earlier.
Upgrade your RAM. I was pleasantly surprised that going from 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM still made a difference in boot time. More memory, however, doesn’t do much.
Get an SSD. This is probably the best (albeit costly) way to make your PC boot up more quickly. SSDs are 10–100 times faster with small random read operations, and this is exactly what is necessary to make Windows boot up faster than before. The Asus tablet I tested cold boots in 17 seconds and is fully usable after that—all thanks to its SSD. I know SSDs are still a bit of an investment, but they’re worth every penny.
