Soluto used to be the go-to program for boosting your boot time. Jane Hoskyn tests the best alternatives for managing your startup and finding out what’s slowing down your PC
Autoruns
Autoruns is a free portable tool that shows you exactly what’s going on in your computer from the moment it boots. If an item is ticked in the Autoruns list, that means it runs automatically when you start your PC. Untick an item to stop it running in future. The fewer items you have ticked, the faster your PC will boot.
If that were all it did, we could wrap up and go home, but there’s much more to Autoruns. The program window is baffling at first, presenting a huge multicoloured list of everything that’s running or installed on your PC, including processes, drivers, services and so on. Tabs at the top break up the information into smaller batches.
Click the Services tab, for example, and you’ll see a list that includes your antivirus software and processor, complete with descriptions and file locations. You should definitely leave those ticked. If you’re not sure whether an item needs to run at startup or not, right-click it and select Search Online.
Autoruns has been carefully designed to give you control without letting you mess up the operating system. For that reason, it doesn’t show built-in Windows processes by default. To reveal them, open the Options menu and untick Hide Windows Entries. We wouldn’t recommend unticking any of these, however, as Windows might not boot without them.
The Options menu also lets you Hide VirusTotal Clean Entries. Click this to narrow the list to dodgy files that may harm your PC.
Autoruns has been updated for Windows 10 and works on versions going back to Vista. The portable EXE file runs from a USB stick.
If we could add one feature, it would be the ability to order items by their impact on boot time. The lack of XP support is also a shame for those of us who still have XP laptops that take longer to boot than our laundry takes to dry.
VERDICT
Autoruns isn’t a carbon copy of our old favourite, Soluto, which showed you at a glance what was slowing down your startup, but you can use it to achieve the same benefit and more. If you want a tool that tells you what’s affecting your PC from boot to shutdown, and lets you change it, Autoruns is essential.
Chameleon Startup Manager
Chameleon comes in two colours. The free version is like a simplified Autoruns, with a shorter list of processes that run automatically. Unlike Autoruns, Chameleon lets you configure the settings of processes and create shortcuts, while a Tools menu gives you quick access to Registry Editor, Task Manager and more.
Chameleon Startup Manager Pro ($29.95, or around £21, for a lifetime licence for three PCs) is the F1 car of boot boosters. It lets you set up a list of delayed starts, so each program or process begins as soon as the previous one has finished. You can set items to run at specific times or on certain days, and specify the conditions under which a process can start, such as when you’re online or your PC is idle.
Both versions run in Windows 10 and as far back as XP.
As with Autoruns, we’d like to be able to see at a glance which items are adding the most time to our startup. Unlike our Gold and Bronze award winners, Chameleon needs to be installed, and the installer tries to trick you into installing the paid-for Pro version, which is very bad form.
VERDICT
Chameleon Startup Manager’s paid-for version is like a turbo Autoruns, giving you full control over which processes can start and when. Using it requires some patience and confidence, but once you’ve mastered it, this tool will make your PC boot like new.
WhatInStartup
If you have an old PC that’s stuffed with programs but takes so long to start up that you can’t even be bothered to switch it on, this is the tool you need. WhatInStartup is one of hundreds of no-nonsense system tools created by Nir Sofer for his site NirSoft (www.nirsoft.net).
Although the program works in Windows 10 and 8.1, there’s little point in running it on new PCs because it doesn’t list services, codecs and other advanced boot junk. It just targets auto-running programs and drivers, of which there may be many on older PCs.
To use WhatInStartup, simply copy it to a USB stick, insert it in the port of any PC running Windows 2000 or later, and run the program. Select multiple auto-running items, then click the red dot to disable them.
The program includes a clever Permanent Disable Mode, which detects programs that re-enable themselves after you’ve disabled them, and blocks them forever.
We’d love a Windows 10-appropriate version with a comprehensive list of boot processes and start-up junk that deserves the Permanent Disable Mode treatment. But we’ll let it pass, because Nir Sofer is hard at work on other ingenious ways to speed up your PC.
VERDICT
An efficient tool that could revive old PCs by blitzing the junk that stops them booting properly. What it lacks in sophistication it makes up for in ease of use and support for much older systems.
IObit Advanced SystemCare
We had high hopes for this Windows 10-ready suite from system-boosting specialist IObit. However, it hogs space and memory – and runs automatically at startup! It’s not worth installing for the Startup Manager, but it has other tools designed to keep a new PC fast and safe. Make sure you untick the bundled extras in the installer.
WinPatrol
WinPatrol comes in free and paid-for (‘Plus’) versions. The free program looks like a mini-Autoruns and has a brilliant Delayed Startup List feature. Certain items, such as Registry files, are marked ‘Plus Required’. A lifetime licence costs $29.95 (£21) for up to five PCs, and is easy to activate in the Plus tab.
Malwarebytes StartUpLite
This free, portable program instantly reveals what’s slowing your startup. Great! But it found no boot baddies on our Windows 10 PC, even though Autoruns and Chameleon found plenty. This is because StartUpLite identifies start-up sloths from a limited list (bit.ly/startuplite395), which focuses on security. Keep it on the same USB stick as WhatInStartup for boosting older PCs.