Every Windows user, whether they’re using XP, Vista or Windows 7, wants to speed up boot time. So, over the years, we’ve offered many tips and tricks and featured many programs that can help you reduce the amount of time it takes Windows to boot. Probably none of them is more important than reducing the number of programs that start with Windows. And we’ve told you many times to cut down on the number of programs you allow to start with Windows – so we’ll assume you’ve already done that \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
But there is another tip we’ve never featured. It’s not a very well-known tip, but it can help you reduce the amount of time it takes for your version of Windows to start up. <\/p>\n
Windows keeps a list of all the recent items you’ve opened. And since we all open a lot of things, over time the list can become very large. Every time you boot, Windows checks that list during boot. So if that list is huge, it takes Windows longer to check it and Windows takes longer to start up. (You should also know, if you leave that list intact, anyone who uses your computer can see what you’ve opened. Right? Right! We’re just sayin’…)<\/p>\n
Here are simple instructions for clearing the list of recently opened items. It’s different for each version of Windows..<\/p>\n
Windows XP<\/p>\n
Windows XP has a section of the Start menu you can see called \u201cMy Recent Documents\u201d. This section displays the last 15 documents that you’ve opened. But the real number of recently opened documents that XP keeps can be much larger than the 15 items you can see. Here’s how to clear that list and hopefully improve your Windows boot time:<\/p>\n
1. Click the Start button
\n2. Click Run
\n3. Type \u201crecent\u201d into the box (no quotes please) and then click OK.
\n4. When the folder has opened, you can delete all or some of the items in that list.<\/p>\n
Windows Vista and Windows 7<\/p>\n
In Vista, the start menu no longer displays recent documents. In Windows 7, recently used items show in Jumplists.<\/p>\n
Here’s how to view and clean that list in Vista:<\/p>\n
1. Click the Start button
\n2. Enter shell:recent into the Start Search box (notice there are no spaces between shell:recent )
\n3. In the list that appears, click on shell:recent
\n4. When the folder opens, delete any (or all) items you wish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every Windows user, whether they’re using XP, Vista or Windows 7, wants to speed up boot time. So, over the years, we’ve offered many tips and tricks and featured many programs that can help you reduce the amount of time it takes Windows to boot. Probably none of them is more important than reducing the number of programs\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1109,1510],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2958,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions\/2958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}