How to Make Your Windows PC Boot Faster

Computers have come a long way since the beige boxes of old, but even with speeds measured in gigahertz and gigabytes per second, they still involve some occasional waiting.

- WHITSON GORDON

If you’re tired of solving Rubik’s Cubes while you wait for your computer to boot, here are a few ways you can speed up the process.

ENABLE WINDOWS’ FAST STARTUP MODE

Windows 10 has a feature called Fast Startup that does exactly what it sounds like, and this is an obvious first stop in your quest. Essentially, this is a sort of halfway mode between hibernating and shutting down. It won’t save your open applications, like hibernation will, but the under-the-hood OS will go into hibernation mode, helping you start up with a clean state faster.

Rebooting is unaffected, though, so if you run into problems with Windows Update or getting into your BIOS, you may have to restart your PC to perform those tasks rather than shutting down.

On many machines, this may be enabled by default, but if you ever turned it off—or if for some reason it wasn’t enabled on the desktop you built yourself—you can flip the switch pretty easily.

Head to Settings > System > Power & Sleep and click the Additional Power Settings link on the right-hand side of the window. From there, click Choose What the Power Buttons Do, and you should see a checkbox next to Turn on Fast Startup in the list of options.

If it’s grayed out, you’ll need to click the Change Settings That Are Currently Unavailable link at the top of that window first, then turn on the Fast Startup feature. Be sure to click the Save Changes button when you’re done.

ADJUST YOUR UEFI/BIOS SETTINGS