It's not a secret that any version of Windows will start to slow down as the install gets older. This certainly apply to Windows Vista most of all. This Acer PC that we bought years ago came with Windows Vista. We bought it a few weeks within the release date of Windows 7. That's what I get for being impatient. So, as months and years passed by, the Vista install in this desktop started slowing down, most especially at boot.
The only way I knew how to make the boot faster is MSCONFIG. However, what if I need some apps to launch at start-up? MSCONFIG has no ability to delay launching of apps. But this cool app called Startup Delayer can. This is literally the only thing I did to make my boot faster than before.
Of course I had to defrag my hard drive and clean my registry once in a while, but Startup Delayer did everything after that.
I'm not affiliated with the Startup Delayer folks. This is not a paid post, just to be clear. I was never paid to post, nor will I ever accept money to post positive reviews for anything.