Startup Delayer allows us to delay the loading of all applications that auto-start when we login to our desktop. Let’s see how we can smoothen and optimize the login process with it.
Download and install
Visit the program’s official site and download it from the provided link. Startup Delayer comes in a premium and a standard, free version. For most people, the free version is more than enough since it doesn’t have significant restrictions. After you download the application’s installer, continue to its installation as normal. After the installation finishes, run Startup Delayer and choose your preferred language from the window that pops up.
Set Startup Behaviour
Startup Delayer will almost immediately ask you how you would like it to operate. By moving the slider to the far left, towards “Start Fast,” you choose that you want all the applications that load when you enter your desktop available as soon as possible. Even if that translates to pauses, stuttering, and you having to wait until they fully load. “Start smooth,” at the far right of the slider, is the opposite: it extends the delay between each application’s startup. This way, you will be able to start using your computer almost immediately, with no stuttering because of loading applications fighting for resources, but with a considerably prolonged startup process due to the extra delays. Since the slider doesn’t have only two positions, you have more granular control over how quick but choppy or smooth but slow you want your startup to be.
Disable unwanted apps
Sometimes, programs add themselves to the startup list without your knowledge. There is no point in delaying them “to optimize the boot process” when you can entirely eliminate them from it. Find them in the program’s startup list, and either fully remove them by right-clicking on them and choosing “Delete Selected” (or pressing the delete key on your keyboard), or bypass their loading by choosing “Disable Selected.” Deleted items are fully expelled from Startup Delayer’s list. The disabled ones, though, remain in a “Disabled” sub-list, in case you want to re-enable them in the future.
Delay startup apps quickly
Although some applications “won’t appreciate” not starting up on their own, and Startup Delayer taking over, you can’t know from the very beginning if they will. So, instead of trying to guess, select everything in your “Normal Startup,” right-click, and, from the menu that pops up, choose “Delay Selected.” If, after a restart, you spot some applications trying to load both on their own and through startup Delayer, you have two options.
Enter the application’s settings, locate the option that makes it load automatically when you log into Windows and disable it.Remove the artificial delay introduced by startup Delayer, and let the application load on its own as usual.
Also note that by selecting an application, you can use the delay settings at the bottom of startup Delayer’s window to define a different delay than the other apps. You can either adopt Startup Delayer’s default approach, that tracks the usage of the CPU and HDD’s and loads each application if X% of them is idle, or set a manual delay based on time — like, say, one or two minutes.
Manually set delays
For more control over how each application will start up, double-click on it. Out of the top list of tabs, you can check out more information about the selected program in “File Details” or “Digital Signature,” but everything required to control how it will start up is in the first tab, “Launch Details.” In the “Delay” sub-tab, you will meet the same options that are available in the program’s main window when you select an application, that allow you to configure either an automatic or a manual delay for it. The Wait tab is where we find Startup Delayer’s handy ability to halt the startup process until a program has completed loading. By enabling “Ensure this application is completely loaded before continuing,” you can make sure a larger applications’ loading won’t be interrupted by smaller ones. This way, you can also load your applications in series, in case you need some of them before the others. Note that if you modify the setting in “Before launching the next Application” from “Don’t Wait” to any of the other two options, no other applications will load, until..:
The current one has completed its run and closed on its own or you have manually ended it (“Wait for this Application to terminate”).You chose to proceed with the login process (“Wait for User confirmation”).
In the “Advanced” tab you can find even more options that power users will love, but are probably overkill for everyone who doesn’t want to overthink how to optimize their login process Out of all options in this tab, the most important for optimizing your login process are:
“Launch on specific days” allows you to set an application to launch only on specific days of the week.“Launch only if Internet connection is detected” allows to skip loading any applications that require an Internet connection if one isn’t found.
You’ll be able to see the results of your tweaks after the next reboot. Your login will either be quicker or “smoother” (allowing you to use your computer even while applications are starting up), depending on how you’ve set everything up.
