How to Disable Startup Apps on Windows for a Faster Boot

Your PC reaches the desktop quickly, then sits there for another minute while launchers, chat apps and updaters load one by one before you can open a game. Learning to disable startup apps properly is the simplest way to get that minute back, and it often trims a few hundred megabytes of memory use as well.

The catch is that some startup entries matter. Turn off the wrong one and your headset software, audio driver panel or cloud backup stops working. This guide shows what to switch off, what to leave alone, and how to measure whether it helped.

Why startup apps slow down a gaming PC

Every program set to run at sign in competes for the same disk, CPU and network in the first 30 to 90 seconds after you log in. On an NVMe drive this contention is shorter, but it still adds up when you have eight or ten entries. On an older SATA SSD or a hard drive, it is very noticeable.

Gaming PCs tend to collect more startup apps than most. A typical setup might include Steam, the Epic Games Launcher, EA app, Ubisoft Connect, Discord, a motherboard RGB tool, a mouse utility, a GPU overlay, OneDrive and a browser helper. Each one wants to check for updates the moment it opens.

Once they are loaded, many of these sit in the tray using between 50 and 300 MB of RAM each. On a 16 GB system that is not catastrophic, but it is memory your game could use, and some of them also run background downloads that can cause stutter in online matches.

How to disable startup apps in Windows 11

There are two places to do this, and both control the same list:

1. Task Manager. Press Ctrl plus Shift plus Esc. Click Startup apps in the left menu, or the Startup tab on Windows 10. You will see each entry, its publisher, its status and a Startup impact rating.
2. Settings. Open Settings, then Apps, then Startup. This shows the same apps as simple toggles.

Task Manager is better for decisions because of the impact column. Right click the column headers and add Disk I/O at startup and CPU at startup to see real numbers rather than just High, Medium or Low.

To disable an entry, right click it and choose Disable. Nothing is uninstalled. The app still opens normally when you launch it yourself, it simply does not start with Windows.

What to turn off and what to keep

Here is how I sort a typical gaming PC list:

The last row on the right matters more than people think. If you followed a guide to set a fan curve for a quieter gaming PC using vendor software, disabling that tool at startup means your fans fall back to default behaviour.

If you do not recognise an entry, right click and choose Open file location. The folder name usually tells you which program it belongs to. If you are still unsure, leave it on and look it up later rather than guessing.

Measure the difference

Do not rely on feel. Before changing anything, restart the PC and time how long it takes from the sign in screen until the tray icons stop appearing and the disk activity in Task Manager settles below about 5 percent. A phone stopwatch is fine.

Then disable your chosen entries, restart twice, and time it again. On a mid range system with an NVMe drive I typically see the settle time drop from about 70 seconds to 25 or 30 after trimming a list from 12 entries to 5. Memory in use at idle often falls by 1 to 1.5 GB.

Task Manager also shows Last BIOS time at the top of the Startup apps page. That number is the firmware part of boot and will not change with startup apps. If it is over 15 seconds, the slowdown is in your BIOS settings, not Windows.

The advice I would ignore

You will see guides that tell you to disable everything in the list and then go further: turn off services in msconfig, kill background processes with a third party optimiser, and remove anything from Microsoft. I think that approach causes more problems than it solves.

Disabling services is not the same as disabling startup apps. Services handle things like audio, networking, updates and game input. Turning the wrong ones off can break controller detection, Windows Update or anti cheat systems, and the symptoms often show up days later when you have forgotten what you changed. Paid optimiser tools tend to do the same thing with less transparency.

A sensible target is a startup list of five to seven entries you genuinely want running all the time. That captures most of the benefit with almost none of the risk. Pair it with the checks in a good PC cleaning routine every few months and you will rarely need anything heavier.

Keep the list from growing back

Apps re-enable themselves more often than they should, usually after an update. A few habits help:

• During installs, look for a checkbox like "Run at Windows startup" and untick it.
• In each launcher's own settings, turn off "Launch on system start". Steam, Discord and Epic all have this option.
• Check Task Manager's Startup apps page once a month, ideally after a big Windows or driver update.

If boot is still slow after a clean startup list, the problem may be hardware. Our guide on deciding when a PC upgrade is actually worth it helps you judge whether an SSD or more RAM would change things.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to disable all startup apps?

It is safe in the sense that nothing will be deleted, but some features will stop working until you open the app manually. Audio panels, security notifications, cooling software and laptop input drivers are better left on. Disable the rest selectively.

Does disabling startup apps improve gaming performance?

It mainly improves boot time and frees memory at idle. In games, the gain is usually small, but it can reduce stutter caused by background launchers downloading updates while you play. Systems with 8 or 16 GB of RAM benefit most.

Why do disabled startup apps keep coming back?

Many apps switch their startup setting back on after an update. Turn off the launch on startup option inside the app's own settings as well as in Task Manager. Checking the list after major updates catches the rest.