My PC starts up really slowly and when it is finally ready to go, there are all sorts of programs that are already running, including some utilities that I don’t recall adding. How can I get a handle on what’s happening? I don’t know Windows 11 very well…
There are lots of legitimate programs and applications that need to be launched during your bootup sequence. What you don’t want to do is just get rid of everything to speed up your startup sequence! Still, plenty of programs seem to be designed with the assumption that they deserve that vaunted spot in your startup sequence too, even if they don’t. In the worst case, it could also be malware or some other malicious program that’s monitoring what you do, what sites you visit, etc. Those should be detected by an anti-virus scan. You do have an anti-virus program running on your PC, yes?
Well-written programs will typically have a “launch on startup” option somewhere in its settings or preferences, which is generally the preferred way to manage these sorts of concerns. Windows 11 also has a separate Startup Apps section in your system settings too, which is an important place to check once you’ve figured out what’s going on. Let’s have a closer look.
DISABLE LAUNCH ON STARTUP IN THE APP
Last time I started up my Windows 11 computer, I noticed that there was a “^” icon on the Taskbar and upon clicking it found that a program called HD Widget Launcher was running in background. I hadn’t started it up, so it must have installed itself as a launch-on-startup program. A click to show the utility and you can see its clock icon:
But I don’t want this program running all the time. A click on the icon and I see that in the Widget Launcher program, I can easily disable launch-on-startup in Settings:
That’s how it should work, and how programmers should implement this feature. But what if you can’t find the associated application,there are no settings or preferences, or they don’t list a control for Launch on Startup? This means that it’s time to move to Windows settings instead.
STARTUP APPS IN WINDOWS SETTINGS
Go onto your Taskbar and search for “startup”:
You can see that it immediately matched Startup Apps and offers up an easy “Open” link. Click or tap on that to open up System Settings in exactly the right spot.
By default, the “Apps > Startup” shows applications that are in the list by alphabetical order but notice that not every app is enabled. You can have some on and others off, as you can see with Microsoft Edge vs Microsoft Teams.
I like to change the sort order to ascertain which of the startup apps have the most “impact” on the startup sequence and computer, which is done by clicking on “Name“:
Choose “Startup impact” and you can then decide whether to disable the ones listed as having the highest impact on the startup sequence. In my case, there aren’t too many with a high impact, as the resorted list shows:
Since I don’t connect mobile devices to this PC, I have disabled that startup utility, and it’s probably a good idea to disable Microsoft Edge too: All that means is the first time you launch it when you need to visit the Web it’ll be a smidge slower.
Notice that Widget Launcher is on this list – because I didn’t disable it in the app itself – and now I can disable it from starting up on my PC with a click:
That’s it. Easy enough.
TIME FOR A SYSTEM RESTART
Once you’ve tried to hunt down the Launch on Startup options in various program Settings and gone into the System Settings to disable as much as possible (which can significantly speed up your startup sequence), it’s time to restart your computer and see what slipped through the cracks.
This is most easily done by clicking on the power “circle” icon on the Windows menu and choosing “Restart”:
Once your computer restarts – and hopefully it’s noticeably faster! – you can then look to see what’s still starting up. My Widget Launcher has indeed stopped being part of my own startup list, as a glance at the Taskbar confirms:
Hurray. Hopefully, you’ll find it just as easy. Don’t forget to run a deep scan in your malware protection utility too!
Pro tip: I’ve been writing about Microsoft Windows for many years. Please check out my extensive and well-documented Windows help area for lots more useful tutorials while you’re visiting the site!