Windows boot or start times – the time it takes to start Windows once you turn on a device from a powered off state to when Windows is fully ready is a complicated topic. Traditionally lot of apps, e.g., the Opera web browser, add a process to Windows startup so that starting the full app seems more responsive or quicker. Apps like BootRacer Premium help you tame this annoyance but may or may not allow you to reduce the time it takes to get Windows up & running. If it was that easy to fix Windows wouldn’t have sleep & hibernation.
When you turn on a Windows device from a powered off state, the 1st thing that happens is the device’s BIOS does a quick inventory of the attached or connected components, looks up the settings that have been stored, then looks for the necessary files and starts the boot process. Many BIOS have options in their settings that can speed up the process, such as Fast Boot, and ignoring some of the drives that may be attached. Once the boot process starts, files must be read, and if they’re stored on a faster drive, i.e., an SSD, that happens much faster, though you’ll likely not notice a difference between the fastest & slowest SSDs on the market. The computing power of the Windows device has a huge role to play – starting up the various processes and services uses both the CPU & RAM, and faster hardware gets those things done faster. [We’ve got some lower end (i.e., cheaper) devices, & I normally fire up Task Mgr. as soon as I’ve got the Windows desktop, then walk away – until the CPU use drops below 50%, there’s no point in trying to use or do anything.]
One of the first things Windows does when it’s starting up is look for and load any drivers, which is the software that lets Windows talk to the device’s hardware. Somewhat closely related are Services that start with Windows, which often use drivers. Now it gets a bit confusing, because not everything listed and recognized by Windows as a driver has anything at all to do with hardware – functioning as a driver is a sometimes-convenient way to get whatever software started with Windows [and why Malware often masquerades as a driver]. Sometimes two or more drivers &/or services conflict, which can delay Windows startup [if you’re lucky – those conflicts can also break Windows].
Software can auto-start by having a shortcut in the Start Menu’s Startup folders. They’re hidden from the normal Start Menu view, and are located at C:\ProgramData\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Start Menu\ Programs\ StartUp\ for all users, and for just your Windows profile, C:\Users\ [UserName]\ AppData\ Roaming\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Start Menu\ Programs\ Startup\ . There are also 3 Run keys in the registry, each accompanied by a RunOnce key, that does just what it says: Computer\ HKCU\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Run - and - Computer\ HKLM\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Run – and - Computer\ HKLM\ SOFTWARE\ WOW6432Node\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Run. Those are the 5 locations that apps like BootRacer Premium target. There’s also a 6th way to auto-start software, using a task – you can use Windows Task Scheduler to find & edit those tasks.
The advantage of BootRacer Premium & similar apps is that, while they only let you work with some of the reasons Windows takes a while to start, they’re normally pretty safe. Everything that starts with Windows starts for a reason, and sometimes it’s a Really Good reason. Sysinternal’s free Autoruns will show you everything that starts with Windows, and it will gladly let you break Windows too. It can be an invaluable tool, but Please Back Up 1st. docs.microsoft[.]com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns . Windows itself lists the impact of apps that start with Windows, and lets you turn them off – in Win10 Settings & Task Mgr, in Win11 Task Mgr. – but turning an app off using Windows tools does not always turn them off (!). Personally, with every new copy of Windows one of the 1st things I’ll do is run Regedit, adding the 3 run keys to Regedit’s Favorites menu [that’s proved to be a great help & timesaver]. Note: it’s easy [& common sense] to export a run key before deleting anything, so if there’s a problem you just need to double click that exported .reg file to put things back.
Windows Services are trickier – though it’s rare, you can break Windows, so again backup to be safe. You can work with many [but not all] services using the Services applet in Control Panel -> Admin Tools [Win11 uses a separate Windows Tools window], and you have some limited control in Task Mgr. You can disable a service, set it to manual, have it auto-start, or set it to delayed auto-start, in case there’s a conflict or something else must start first. Often an app will add a service that’s set to auto-start, and if you set it to manual, the app itself will start the service when you start it, though this does not work all the time, e.g., with BootRacer Premium’s service.
Now BootRacer Premium itself… in my 32-bit Win7 VM it takes up ~54MB with 768 new registry entries recorded, though Many of those were harmless cache entries. [You could trim the number of files, which can sometimes matter, by deleting unused language files.] It does add its own service which is accessible in the Services applet. It seems to use an unusual run key in the registry: [HKLM\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer\ Run]. It provides logs to Event Viewer, and unusually stores logs in C:\Users\ Public\ Documents\.
I think the biggest benefit from using BootRacer Premium may be to alert you if Windows startup times suddenly increase, because malware is going to try to auto-start with Windows. That doesn’t of course mean that there would be a noticeable delay – some malware writers are better than others – but nowadays every little bit you can do might help. Otherwise, it’s handy if you’ve got a known problem where turning off an app’s auto-start using Windows own tools doesn’t work.