Enable or Disable Startup Delay in Windows 10  

I hear that. :)

I have six external HDD's attached to my machine and it takes about 4 minutes to reboot, most of the time being spent waiting on the POST beep. If I disconnect those drives, it takes about 1 minute to get to the Windows Logon screen (75% speed increase). So I connect the drives just after the POST beep. It works great to speed up my boot up, but introduces another problem...

I have a couple of portable apps located on one of the external HDD's that I launch at startup from the shell:startup folder that will appear in the system tray. If I disconnect the drives on reboot (shutdown/Pwr On), those shortcuts aren't present to launch at startup. So I have to manually launch them.

I was hoping that if I delay the startup of those items using the "enable" reg file, it would solve the problem by delaying those couple of shortcuts until the drives are recognized. Is that a reasonable strategy? Or is there a more elegant solution?

Fwiw, my registry does not currently contain the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Serialize].

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Silky said:

I have six external HDD's attached to my machine and it takes about 4 minutes to reboot, most of the time being spent waiting on the POST beep. If I disconnect those drives, it takes about 1 minute to get to the Windows Logon screen (75% speed increase). So I connect the drives just after the POST beep. It works great to speed up my boot up, but introduces another problem...

I have a couple of portable apps located on one of the external HDD's that I launch at startup from the shell:startup folder that will appear in the system tray. If I disconnect the drives on reboot (shutdown/Pwr On), those shortcuts aren't present to launch at startup. So I have to manually launch them.

I was hoping that if I delay the startup of those items using the "enable" reg file, it would solve the problem by delaying those couple of shortcuts until the drives are recognized. Is that a reasonable strategy? Or is there a more elegant solution?

Fwiw, my registry does not currently contain the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Serialize].

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Hello mate,

The delay for startup apps is enabled by default, so this most likely hasn't helped.

You might check your BIOS/UEFI boot settings to see if you may find something there to reduce the boot delay.

Brink said:

Hello mate,

The delay for startup apps is enabled by default, so this most likely hasn't helped.

You might check your BIOS/UEFI boot settings to see if you may find something there to reduce the boot delay.

Yeah, I read that it was supposed to be enabled by default. I don't know if the fact that I don't have that registry key created by your REG file has any bearing on it being enabled. Is there a way I can prove that it is currently enabled?

Also, let's pretend that it is not currently enabled... in your view is a startup delay a reasonable strategy?

Thanks for your consistently fine help. Whether you solve my problems or not, I can rely on you for sage advice; I'm so very grateful for that, just so you know.

Silky said:

Yeah, I read that it was supposed to be enabled by default. I don't know if the fact that I don't have that registry key created by your REG file has any bearing on it being enabled. Is there a way I can prove that it is currently enabled?

Also, let's pretend that it is not currently enabled... in your view is a startup delay a reasonable strategy?

Thanks for your consistently fine help. Whether you solve my problems or not, I can rely on you for sage advice; I'm so very grateful for that, just so you know.

It wouldn't hurt anything to manually enable it to make sure to test and see if it makes any difference. I don't believe it will though.

Brink said:

It wouldn't hurt anything to manually enable it to make sure to test and see if it makes any difference. I don't believe it will though.

By "manually enable it", do you mean to use the REG file from this tutorial?

Also, is there a way to prove it's enabled without using the REG file?

Silky said:

By "manually enable it", do you mean to use the REG file from this tutorial?

Also, is there a way to prove it's enabled without using the REG file?

Correct/ If you do not have the Startupdelayinmsec DWORD, the delay is enabled. The DWORD is not there by default.

Brink said:

Correct/ If you do not have the Startupdelayinmsec DWORD, the delay is enabled. The DWORD is not there by default.

Okay, then that's a dead end for me to solve the issue at hand. As far as BIOS settings, nothing stands out as a lead to check. What I know for certain is when I have all of my external HDD's plugged in, I can see drive activity on all of them sequentially when I Pwr On. Again, about 4 minutes until I hear the POST beep. They're all connected via USB hub, so unplugging that and then Pwr On, I get the POST beep in about 45 seconds. Just after the beep, I plug the hub in again and I'm off to the races - except for the problem I'm trying to solve.

I used to have Norton Security and there was a feature for delaying specific user selected startup items, whether they were in the shell:startup folder or not. Is there anything like that native to Windows?

Silky said:

Okay, then that's a dead end for me to solve the issue at hand. As far as BIOS settings, nothing stands out as a lead to check. What I know for certain is when I have all of my external HDD's plugged in, I can see drive activity on all of them sequentially when I Pwr On. Again, about 4 minutes until I hear the POST beep. They're all connected via USB hub, so unplugging that and then Pwr On, I get the POST beep in about 45 seconds. Just after the beep, I plug the hub in again and I'm off to the races - except for the problem I'm trying to solve.

I used to have Norton Security and there was a feature for delaying specific user selected startup items, whether they were in the shell:startup folder or not. Is there anything like that native to Windows?

As a workaround for now, I suppose you could have a script run at startup that will automatically run the apps after an included delay in the script. This will give you time to turn on or connect the external drives before the apps run.

Another option is to create a task like below to run the app at logon with the delay box checked and set how you want.

How to Create Task to Run App or Script at Logon in Windows 10

Brink said:

As a workaround for now, I suppose you could have a script run at startup that will automatically run the apps after an included delay in the script. This will give you time to turn on or connect the external drives before the apps run.

Another option is to create a task like below to run the app at logon with the delay box checked and set how you want.

How to Create Task to Run App or Script at Logon in Windows 10

Don't know why I didn't think of Task Scheduler myself (slaps forehead). Good solution, thanks.