How to Speed up a Slow Logon

Everyone that has ever used a computer at work has dealt with it - the dreaded reboot. Nothing brings business to a screeching, crashing halt faster than a software application crashing and burning for no apparent reason. Or, depending on the employee and the nature of their work, they may see it as an instant fifteen minute break. After all, it's not as if an employee can do much of anything productive while their computer is resetting, and the login always seems to take forever and a day to come back up.

From an overhead cost perspective, each reboot of a computer is disastrous. It does not take long before a crash here and there can end up costing hours of labor, and generally due to nothing more than a lack of simple maintenance on the machine. This does not have to be the norm. There are ways to stop mal-functioning software from bleeding your business dry.

First and foremost, reduce the number of applications that are running at start-up on your machines. Go through everything that loads automatically and disable anything that either does not get used every day or loads up fairly quickly on its own. If a computer has a fresh install of its operating system and every business critical application, yet still boots slowly, it is time to upgrade your company's computers.

The hard and fast answer is to upgrade the RAM. If the computers are running any less than 1GB of RAM, they are well behind the times anyway. If, however, they have 3.5GB or more, as well as a decently fast processor, it may be time to look for alternative business applications  as the ones you have are obviously using a ton of resources just to start. By the way, if your company is using 64-bit operating systems and hardware, that 3.5GB limit goes right out the window.

Many companies require computers to be shut down every day after work. This will save electricity and prevent slow login times, but there is still the issue of that lost time at the beginning of the shift. A more efficient method, though not quite as easy on the electricity bill, is to have employees reset their computer when their shift ends. There is no need to wait for the computer to boot back up or, many times, even to shut down. Simply click "restart", then go home. By the time the employee has returned to work the next day, the computer will have been restarted for hours, but as no applications will have been running, it will be just like a fresh reboot.