 | By Fred Langa When two or more programs in your list of autostart apps insist on being the first, they can bring the entire startup process to its knees. There are two ways to change the order in which your startup services and software load: one that’s easy but crude, and another that’s difficult but precise. |
Playing referee when apps fight to load first
Hal Allert has several essential programs that need to start very early in the boot process. As a result, they end up stepping on each other’s toes:
- “When my laptop boots up, I usually get the Red Shield from Windows Alert telling me that my Kaspersky Anti-Virus is turned off and I’m not protected. After closing that warning, Kaspersky AV starts up. It tries to get updates from the Web, but my Internet connection hasn’t completed yet.
“Everything else is loading when it wants to, so other warnings are popping up. When my computer is finally connected to the Internet, things calm down. It would seem to be easier all around if the boot order were reversed. Is there a way for me to rearrange the order in which the programs are starting up?”
Because this reduces the multitasking load on your system, the AV tool should start faster than it would otherwise. You can set similar delays before each startup item. By carefully choosing startup delays, you can ensure that lower-priority programs on your autostart list don’t even attempt to run until all your top-priority software is up and stable.
Perhaps the best-known tool of this type is Startup Delayer (more info). It’s free and purposely built for this one task.
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