We all know that if you're looking to speed up the amount of time it takes your computer to boot, the best thing to do is cut down on how many processes start when Windows starts. This is, of course, the obvious advice; if you're starting less things, it takes less time. But what about us chronic downloaders, who can't stand to turn off our favorite utilities? There is an option. It won't make your machine boot as fast as it would without the automatically starting processes, but it will optimize the way in which those processes are started. It's called Startup Delayer.

I know, the name doesn't evoke thoughts of a faster boot, but trust me, it works. The problem with how Windows typically starts, is that it's not very smart about dedicating resources to starting one program before moving on and starting the next. So you end up with a bunch of programs all fighting for CPU cycles and disk-access, and Windows ends up spending more time on mediating between the different starting processes than actually firing up those processes.

So, using Startup Delayer, you can space out the start time for each application so that Windows can focus on starting that application. And once it's done, it can move on to the next one. Although it can take some time and multiple boots to tweak things just right, there is an automatic mode that will make things better than they are right now, which is always nice. And consider, some of the stuff that you want to have available doesn't need to be there within the first 5 minutes your machine is up, in most cases. I'm thinking of desktop search apps like Google Desktop or Copernic - maybe delay these for 10 minutes so that everything else has started before they go about trying to index any recent changes.

The other benefit of this is that you can ensure that the right applications start first, like your anti-virus and software firewall, for example.

Startup Delayer is donationware, so if you enjoy using it, make sure to kick a little something back to the developers.