StartupFaster

What’s it do?

Startup Faster! 2004 claims to make your computer startup much faster and even protect your hard disk from sudden failures.

Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1: No! It slowed down rather than speeded up my computer.

Reviewer 2: During the boot process, Windows will try to launch all the start-up items it finds at the same time. This results in the user not being able to use the system until everything is loaded.

Start Up Faster allows one to select which applications start first and the lag time between starting each program. You even have the ability to disable or delete start-up programs, but for the novice user, they may want to shy away from this as they may inadvertently stop a critical process or application, such as an anti-virus program.

Reviewer 3: Not entirely. It does take over control of Windows start-ups, it does allow you to control the sequence and timing of the start-up applications, and it does provide a simple interface for disabling or removing unwanted start-ups. I did not experience any improvement in how long my system takes to start, and new software installations did not consistently add their startups within Start Up Faster. Curiously, I began finding applications that should have been running had either not been started or had been closed. Start Up Faster may not have been the culprit, but I can't help but suspect it.

Reviewer 4: No.

Reviewer 5: More or less. It does speed up the startup time, though not as dramatically as I’d hoped.

Reviewer 6: On its Web site, URSoftware claims: “In our thousands of tests, Startup Faster! 2004 can speed up your loading speed by 50% to 200%!” When I started testing this program, I was hoping for a similar speed-up to happen. I did not perform “thousands” of tests, but I did keep track of boot-up times, with and without Startup Faster, for several weeks. Startup Faster did actually show an improvement over the original bootup times, but that performance began to degrade, with boot times becoming increasingly slower. To double-check, I uninstalled Startup Faster, and again rebooted without Startup Faster being on my system. Current bootup times are now about 30% faster without Startup Faster than they were when Startup Faster was running.

Reviewer 7: No. One would think that a program with a name like “StartupFaster 2004” would make your computer boot faster. Not so in my case, and not so by design, unless you use this program to delete a huge number of startup programs. It actually adds a default delay of 4 seconds between loading each startup file. With 30 startup files on my system (yes, I know what each one does and I want them all there!), my start time more than doubled from 1.5 minutes and 3.33 minutes.

Reviewer 8: No, on the contrary start-up times almost doubled on both test machines: On my 2.8GHz machine (with 56 start-up programs), over a series of five runs, the median start-up time increased from 3 minutes 12 seconds to 6 minutes 16 seconds while its Running Statistics panel was claiming it had saved an average of 2 minutes 48 seconds per run. On my 900MHz machine (with 37 start-up programs), over a series of four runs, the median start-up time increased from two minutes 27 seconds to 6 minutes 22 seconds while claiming a savings of an average of 1 minute 42 seconds per run.


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1: Yes; although it did seem a bit large of a download (3.01MB) for this type of program.

Reviewer 2: The installation process went smoothly, I accepted all the defaults, rebooted the system and eagerly awaited a faster start-up.

Reviewer 3: Installation was a nightmare. This was not entirely Start Up Faster's fault – emboldened by a long string of painless installations and updates, I didn't precede the installation with even a Registry backup, let alone a system image. Problems developed which turned out to be (largely) from an update applied to another product on my system. I'm not convinced that Start Up Faster hasn't contributed to the problems, though. My problem with the installation was that it is TOO simple! For a low-level utility that's playing hopscotch with your Registry and your startup files, there should be at least an option to step through the installation slowly, particularly considering that most people with the cajones to install a program that controls Windows start-up will probably also have the good sense to already have anti-virus and anti-malware services watching intently for the kinds of actions this installation performs repeatedly. Starting the installation, with absolutely no warning (e.g. “We will now begin moving your startup items from Windows and transferring them to Start Up Faster”) or prompting (e.g. “Windows is currently automatically starting Foo. Do you want to [ ] Let Startupfaster give you control over Foo (default)? [ ] Let Windows continue starting Foo? [ ] Transfer Foo to Start Up Faster, but temporarily disable it? [ ] Permanently remove Foo from Windows startup and NOT transfer it to Start Up Faster?”), I was faced with a dizzying series of warning prompts from several monitoring programs. It resembled logging into an Eastern European porn site with Internet Explorer and no pop-up protection (or so I'm told). Before the installation completed, I rebooted (Safe Mode) and took a look at my Registry. Not having a recent backup, I decided to start up normally and see what happened. Amazingly (having shut down with the installation program still running), Start Up Faster loaded and proceeded to load the startups I'd given it control over. Indeed, it had done what had been promised, and I now had a simple way to sequence and time my start-ups. The installation definitely needs to provide the user with more feedback and to offer an “Advanced” installation providing direct control. Still, my reboot didn't break it, so I'm impressed. Uninstall seems to have gone OK as well. Most, if not all, of my startup applications were restored to the Registry Run key, and this time I was prepared for the rapid series of Malware Alerts.

Reviewer 4: Yes.

Reviewer 5: Yes, I had no problems at all with the installation.

Reviewer 6: Yes, it was not difficult. However, you must choose “Custom” installation if you wish to have some sort of control over the location of the installation, shortcuts, etc.

Reviewer 7: Installation was fine, but upgrading to the most recent version was difficult.  With StartupFaster 2004 running and pressing the upgrade button, the more recent version downloaded but could not install due to a protected file (StrpFstChg.exe) that could not be deleted. I was able to go around this by going directly to the Web site and downloading the program manually and installing over the old version when the old version was not running.

Reviewer 8: Yes, very straightforward, and a good feature was that it inventoried existing start-up programs during installation and was thus ready to go on next reboot.


Good Points

Reviewer 1: In theory, many; in reality, none (unless you want to count a nice user interface).

Reviewer 2: I did manage to stop some pesky applications from loading and I did manage to delete them from the startup process, so this was welcome. My optimal startup system is to have my Anti-Virus program to load first, then the firewall and the rest to follow. This was accomplished quite easily by selecting the order the programs are run.

Reviewer 3: Start Up Faster moves all of your startups from Windows control to Start Up Faster control. It provides you with the ability to disable or remove individual startups, and to adjust time delays for each. Once installed, new installation programs adding start-up items to the Registry instead add them to Start Up Faster. The few installations I've run since installing Start Up Faster have not been visibly troubled by this, although I'm not certain that in all cases start-up files were successfully installed.

Reviewer 4: I was able to see the various programs that startup when my systems starts.

Reviewer 5: Startup Faster! 2004 was easy to install and set up, and allows you to choose what programs load upon startup. It is easy to use and intuitive.

Reviewer 6: The “Home” Screen is a nice, simple layout, with large, clear buttons across the top, and a small side panel on the left with two main items: Control Panel and Help panel. Under each main head, there are several sub-heads. Of these, the most interesting one is the “Startup Items” under the Control Panel. Here, you will find all the programs that run at the time your computer is starting up. Highlight any one of them, the window at the bottom fills in with information about that program: its name, its “command line”, viz. the location and the name of the actual file on your hard disk, and to the right, another window with more details about the program. At the bottom of that window, you have a link named: “Find more on Google”. This will often bring you to the Web site of the developer of that program, or it will bring you to some other site where people have filled in comments about that program. (Please see below in Weak Points”) In this same window, you can completely delete programs from starting up at all, you can add ones on your own, by browsing to them, and choosing their command file. Or you can temporarily disable them by unchecking the box that has them run. This is safer than deleting them entirely, in case you want to reactivate them at a later date. You can also click on a Properties button, which will bring up the same Properties box that you would get by right-clicking on the shortcut icon for that program that you might have on your desktop or some other location on your computer. The advantage here is that you can verify the properties of all your startup items in one central location.

Reviewer 7: The Test mode displays a list of your start-up programs (actually the command lines to run them). There is a link to Google to allow you to easily look up information about the program to help you decide whether to keep it and find it’s purpose. There was no malware detected by SpyBot Search and Destroy or Counterspy while it was on my system.

Reviewer 8: Startup Faster delivered on its promise to provide a "friendly user interface".

It was very well thought-out and it gave the user everything needed in a compact and attractive format. A minor improvement would be to indicate that the "Time Saved" on its Running Statistics panel was the total Time for all runs shown. Content coverage and presentation of Help-File Documentation was excellent. I'd have liked a better description of the Test Run Button; as far as I could see it didn't do anything. Also, the Help File panel images need updating: the buttons
shown in the Help File were not the buttons presently on the User Interface. Because the Web site listed no committed turnaround response time on problems/bugs reported, I emailed and asked. The response I received was "Normally less than 3 days". Similarly, because the Web site did not list the service hours of operation. I asked and was advised "We support via email, all messages will be replied in no more than 12 hours." -- both indicating good service commitment. However, my "high priority” question took 18 hours for reply. Even so, I found their support posture to be very good compared to programs in this category. That the auto-Response to my question came from a location with local time five hours later than CDT (GMT+6), while the service response came from a site with local time 13hours later probably indicates that the service function is subcontracted remotely.


Weak Points

Reviewer 1: There is one of the most suspicious and foreboding EULA’s (End User License Agreement) I have seen: If a significant defect in the product is found, there is the possibility [emphasis added] of a refund.” Now, that is comforting. The program asks if you would like it to install a quick launch icon which I applaud; however, it installs itself in your startup folder and places an icon in your system tray without asking. There is no way to disable or close the opening splash screen if you wish to discontinue. It is impossible to paste the registration code in the registration window as it closes as soon as you attempt to paste code, so your are faced with typing in by hand, a code that is 70 characters long. Start Up Faster removes/disables all of your startups and system tray icons and places them in its own startup folder so that, rather than simplifying the startup process, it actually adds yet one additional step to the process. It slowed down the start-up on my machines rather than speeding it up. I could not disable it. If you try to disable or even stop it from launching by going to msconfig, it disables all previously permitted startup programs. There is no support for start-up profiles. On my laptop, I have start-up entries that I do not load while docked and others that I need loaded on the road. The lack of a startup profile makes this a manual process. There is no support for controlling startup of Windows services. It is almost impossible to uninstall and would be, for most users I suspect, nearly impossible to totally get rid of it on your computer. After using the standard Windows Add/Remove applet, it left two files, 11 empty registry keys, and two cookies, one labeled as PCFaster and a second one from the download server dl5. Filekicker.net . Furthermore, even after uninstalling, it was necessary to manually restore my start-up programs. In addition, on every reboot a new All Users and Owner startup folder would open automatically even though it was not listed anywhere as a startup item. I had to manually hunt this folder down, manually delete the folder, and manually edit the registry to prevent the folder from being recreated and automatically opened on startup. Support (which is nonexistent—more on that in a moment) states that if there is no reply within 24 hours, you must fax them your concern/question. I guess you only get one time up to bat with these people in the normal support method. And finally, THERE IS NO SUPPORT. I attempted to contact this company (Ursoftware) twice: once as an anonymous customer, and a second time as a reviewer, and in both cases there was never any reply whatsoever. In conclusion, DO NOT DOWNLOAD!!!! DO NOT INSTALL.


Reviewer 2: Unless I missed something , my XP Pro system saved me approximately 3 seconds before it was ready for me. I adjusted the start-up times betweens programs, trimmed down all the start-up items I could and I still did not see a great improvement.

Reviewer 3: The installation process needs to provide feedback as to what is being done, and/or allow for user prompting. The documentation needs to be greatly expanded – there is little or no explanation of how changes to the sequence and timing might improve performance. You're essentially told to make changes and see what happens. While a test function is provided, it didn't seem all that useful.

Reviewer 4: The biggest weak point is that it simply did not speed up my start-up. In fact, it slowed it down and caused CounterSpy to think that every one of the programs that requires access to the Internet was asking for permissions for the first time. This appeared to happen every time I started my system. There was also a mystery window that was in my task bar, but when you clicked on it to open it, it would disappear. Some more direction would have been nice also. Even if all I had to do was install and then let it figure out my system, a message to that effect would have been nice.

Reviewer 5: No real gripes except that the start-up time saved on my system is almost imperceptible. I suppose any time saving is a good one, and it keeps track of how much time you’ve saved by using the product, which is handy.

Reviewer 6: Recently, I sent a rather long email to the support staff, with several questions in the message. I did receive an answer, within 48 hours, but they addressed only one of the questions. That answer was not particularly informative, and in fact evaded the issue. The other questions were not referred to at all. For me, post-purchase support is very important, and must be given the highest priority by software companies. In fact, I have been most loyal to those who gave me serious, prompt and unlimited support to questions that I posed even before buying their program. The help file is not very informative. This may be because the developers have kept the program simple, with very little clutter in any particular module. However, I think that there should be more information or explanation of what you would find, particularly in the Startup Items module. In one item, the Help file refers to the “Startup Loader”, which it calls “the core of Startup Faster! 2004”. I cannot find this at all. The closest I could come to it is the “Rebuild” button (also a button named “Rebuild Startup Information” in the “Options” module). When I click on this item – it must be an important one, because it is one of the big buttons on the Home screen – I get a small pop-up that tells me “The startup information has been successfully rebuilt”. In neither case do I get the process described in the Help file. For another of the big buttons, “Test Run”, the Help file says that it “will call Startup Loader to simulate the system startup, you can adjust the settings to get better performance.” This simply does not happen for me. In short, two of the main functions of the program do not, apparently, do anything at all. Another, somewhat silly criticism perhaps, is that the icons for the Home Page “Big Buttons” do not match the icons shown in the Help file. To me, this is a rather sloppy oversight on the part of the developers or management team of the company. In a couple of cases, the Google Search in the Startup Items menu did not go to a helpful web-site. In fact, in the case of Startup Faster itself, the Google search brought me to a number of online forums where people were reporting difficulties with spam, viruses or spyware issues. They were printing a log of their startup items, and Startup Faster would be one of these items. Or, indeed, in one case it referred to an entirely different program, with no mention of Startup Faster at all. In the case of another program, X1 Desktop Search, all it found were Online Forum logs of startup problems. The search results completely missed the X1 Web-page. This suggests that more work needs to be done on this part of the program. A good idea, but not always helpful

Reviewer 7: As I already stated, this program actually increased the boot time for my system extraordinarily. While it did this, it actually reported that it was saving me minutes per boot. While Startup Faster gives you the option of changing the boot order of your startup programs, it gives no guidance about how to decide to do this. It wrests control of your startup programs from msconfig and transfers it to itself. When I went to msconfig/startup, I only saw 4 entries including StartupFaster, instead of the multitude which is usually there. In favor of this program is the finding that it returned msconfig’s control after it was uninstalled. However, when Startup Faster was merely disabled, most of my startup programs including McAfee (Anti-Virus) Security simply did not boot and run. This could be quite dangerous for an inexperienced user, despite the warning in StartupFaster that this was not a recommended mode.

Reviewer 8: Not only failing to live up to its claim to reduce the loading time of Windows by "at least five times" but in my testing with Windows XP on two different machines it actually degraded start-up time by a factor of two or more. Its price of $29.95 is at least 2-3 times overpriced for the level of functionality advertised. Also, its “full refund if not satisfied is underwhelming in light of the fact that the user must pay return postage. Unless this is a faulty release, or I committed a serious oversight somewhere along the way, or my test environment was "just wrong". And if so, I expect there are a lot of others like me. This program should be avoided like the plague. I can only thank UrSoftware for including an option to bypass Startup Faster! since no uninstall option was included.


Other Comments

Reviewer 1: Some readers may recall that I recently reviewed another program for NNT (Your Uninstaller) by this same software developer, URSOFTWARE . That piece of software as you may recall nearly destroyed my computer. Also in that review I mentioned that I had found an email address for Your Uninstaller through their web site and, after a long search using Google and being unable to find anything about the developers of this software (URSOFTWARE), I wrote to the company explaining who I was and asking if I might have a little background on the company—usually being a “reviewer” gets you a pretty quick response. As I stated in that previous review the entirety of their response was, and again I quote: “We run our business since 1998 and is located on Holden, MA. We are focusing on developing products for common Windows users to make computer more friendly.” It was signed “Thomas.” So to “Thomas,” who now will not even answer a support question from a customer, I say: I, too, would not provide my last name in reference to any product I produced which was so poorly and potentially dangerously designed. Based on my testing of two of your products, you are zero for two and that was two too many for me from your “business.”

Reviewer 2: For now I am a bit reserved on the actual benefits, but I am open to suggestions.

Reviewer 3: I may have liked this program more if it provided analysis of start-ups, reporting on how long each program takes to initialize and timings of disk/memory/CPU/Network access peaks; and, based on this analysis, some recommendations for where each should optimally fall in the start-up sequence, and whether each would benefit from timing adjustments. Another very useful function would be to link each start-up to a database of known start-up applications, thereby simplifying the process of determining which items are needed. Even simply loading the filename into your browser's Web Search function would be a help. Since the main point seems to be cleaning up your start-up files and improving start-up performance, providing useful tools to help accomplish those goals would be a great enhancement.

Reviewer 4: I will admit that every system is different and that I am running a development system. This means that I run things the average person may not. Other people and systems may have great success with this product. The fact that they have a trial period means that everyone should at least try to see if this would help on very slow systems. I was able to upgrade the application through their update process, but I had to use the task manager to manually shutdown the application so it could complete the upgrade. The screen shots in help did not match the actual application – a minor nit but one that could easily confuse a novice user. The uninstall was quick and easy and hasn’t appeared to leave any bits behind.

Reviewer 5: Startup Faster! 2004 is a useful tool, and can shave time off the startup of the typical system while allowing you to control what programs start automatically.

Reviewer 6: This program does attempt to deal with one of the more frustrating aspects of the Windows Operating System. To most of us, what happens during the long minutes that the computer takes to start up is a completely closed Black Box. We have a few clues if we ever find the item called “Startup” in the Start > Programs menu. For me, right now, that is “Empty”, but a lot of stuff must be going on for the computer to take so long to start.. We know that such items as the anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, and a number of other things are getting set up and running, for some of them eventually show up in the system tray. As well, many software programs insert themselves into the startup process, often without our permission. Startup Faster will help in some of these cases. Yet, I feel that this program only scratches the surface. There are other good, solid and well-tested freeware programs that do much of this already. The main advantage that Startup Faster offers is the ability to optimize the order that these programs are loaded and run. That is certainly a step forward. But it leaves out the question of all the other stuff that you would find with the Task Manager (Control-Alt-Delete in Win XP) – all those mysterious “Services” and who knows what else is going on? In summary, I think that this is only a start on dealing with the Startup problem. I do congratulate the developers for taking on this rather daunting process. But currently the results are too inconsistent, and leave too much to be desired, for Startup Faster to yet be considered anything more than an early beta product.

Reviewer 7: I found this program to be worse than useless. Useless would have made my system run no better. StartupFaster 2004 made it run worse.

Reviewer 8: I found it surreal -- even spooky -- that neither UrSoftware.com, nor its twin site pcfaster.com, contained any company name, individual names, location information, or telephone-number, just an email address for support. The online Registration Statement to which one must agree to be able to install and use the program is unfortunately not copyable. A plus is that the Trial Use License is stated to be a "reasonable period of time", although the Web site indicates "'100% Satisfaction guarantee!' Try it for a full 21 days or get your money back!" is unreasonably short in my opinion although the Web site also includes the statement "No risk! 30-day money back guarantee!"


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1: No.

Reviewer 2: Actually, because I install many programs for testing and compatibility and I am constantly browsing the Web looking for new and innovative products, yes, I will continue to use it simply for the following reason: During an application or Web program install, how many times have we seen unwanted snippets install themselves and start running during Windows startup? This program will allow you to delete them or at least pause them until you have a chance to analyze them.

Reviewer 3: No.

Reviewer 4. No, it has already been removed from my system

Reviewer 5: Probably

Reviewer 6: No, I don’t think so; however, I do hope that URSoftware will continue to develop this product. It will be a useful tool, once it has become more reliable. Good marks for trying, but not yet ready for a passing grade. .

Reviewer 7: No. I have already uninstalled it and am enjoying my faster boot times.

Reviewer 8: Are you kidding?

UrSoftware, producer of Start Up Faster! 2004, was provided with this review and asked for their comments. They replied as follows:

Thanks for your work, it's a good review, we will keep improving our
software, I believe it will be better and better.

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