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🐢 Slow Startup Fix

Windows 11 Takes Ages to Boot The Problem Starts at Startup

You press the power button, make tea, come back — and the PC is still loading icons. Most slow boots are not a broken Windows. They are twenty apps all trying to start at the same second.

✍️ Technical Anshu🪟 Windows 11⏱️ 10 minute fix
🎥 Startup junk comes with bloatware — watch the full debloat in the video to remove it at the root

Measure your problem first: open Task Manager, go to the Startup apps tab and look at the top-right corner — Last BIOS time tells you how long the hardware took before Windows even started. If that number is small but the desktop takes minutes to settle, your enemy is startup apps, and the fix is free, safe and reversible.

Task Manager — Startup apps
Microsoft TeamsEnabled  High
Adobe Acrobat updaterEnabled  High
SpotifyEnabled  Medium
OneDriveEnabled  Medium
CortanaEnabled  Low

The Startup tab tells the truth: every “High” impact app enabled here adds seconds before your desktop is usable.

1

Disable Startup Apps You Do Not Need

Every installer adds itself to startup "just in case". Most of them never need to be running before you click them.

  1. Open Task Manager → Startup apps tab
  2. Sort by Startup impact — start with the ones marked High
  3. Right-click and Disable updaters, game launchers, chat apps, and helper tools you open manually anyway
  4. Keep your antivirus and touchpad/audio drivers enabled — those are not the fat, they are the skeleton
2

Do the Same Cleanup in Settings (26H2 Way)

Windows 11 also keeps a startup list in Settings, and the two lists should agree when you are done.

  1. Open Settings → Apps → Startup
  2. Turn Off anything you disabled in Task Manager that still shows On
  3. While you are in Apps, uninstall bundled trial software completely — a disabled entry from an app you never use should simply be removed
3

Check Fast Startup — Helpful for Some, Harmful for Others

Task Manager — Performance — Startup
Last BIOS time: 26.8 seconds
Startup impactHigh
Apps enabled at startup9

Last BIOS time is how long the hardware takes before Windows even starts loading — long times here point at the startup list, not Windows itself.

Fast Startup makes Windows hibernate part of the system instead of fully shutting down. It speeds booting on many PCs, but on some it causes a slow first minute, missing drives or weird driver behaviour after updates.

  1. Press Windows + R, type powercfg.cpl and press Enter
  2. Click Choose what the power buttons do → Change settings that are currently unavailable
  3. If your problems started after an update, untick Turn on fast startup, save, and test for two or three days
4

Remove the Bloatware That Keeps Coming Back to Startup

Some pre-installed apps reinstall their startup entries with every feature update. Disabling them is a patch; removing them is the cure.

  1. Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps and uninstall the bundled games, shopping and trial apps you never open
  2. For the stubborn apps Windows will not uninstall normally, use the debloat method shown in the video below
  3. Restart twice — the second boot is the honest test of startup speed
5

See the Full Cleanup in the Video ⭐ ⭐

Startup speed is mostly about what Windows is carrying. In the full video, the complete Windows 11 26H2 debloat is demonstrated on screen — restore point, the Win11Debloat script and every option explained — so you can remove the root cause instead of fighting startup entries one by one.

🔴 Honest note: If Last BIOS time itself is large and your Windows sits on a mechanical hard disk, startup tuning will only shave seconds. An SSD turns a 3-minute boot into 20 seconds — that is hardware truth, not a software setting.

🎥 Remove the Startup Junk at the Root

Watch the complete Windows 11 26H2 debloat — the same cleanup that empties your startup list for good.

▶️ Watch Full Video
❓ Common Questions (FAQ)

Is it safe to disable everything in the Startup tab?

Almost — but keep your antivirus, and audio/touchpad/graphics control entries if your laptop needs them for special keys. Everything else can be disabled safely because you can simply open the app manually when needed, and re-enable any entry with one right-click.

Why is my PC fast after a restart but slow after shutdown and power-on?

That points at Fast Startup: a restart is a full fresh boot, while a shutdown with Fast Startup restores a saved system image — including its problems. Try disabling Fast Startup (Fix 3) and compare for a few days.

How many startup apps are too many?

There is no magic number, but if more than five non-essential apps launch at boot on a low-end PC, you will feel it. On a typical home PC, antivirus plus one or two essentials is a healthy startup list.

This guide is based on Technical Anshu's Windows 11 26H2 debloat video • Stuck on any step? Ask in the video comments — you will get help there 🙏