[kevinskii]

Great question. I'm wondering the same thing. I also built a PC in 2017 and installed Windows 10 on it. It initially had a 7s boot time following bios startup. Several updates later, the boot time is now close to a minute and app startup times are noticeably slower as well. I've always been very careful about what software I install on it. I've done all of the standard troubleshooting, but so far it hasn't gotten bad enough to warrant a fresh install.

[celsoazevedo]

Task Manager → "Start up" tab

Disable everything and see if it boots faster.

[kevinskii]

Thanks, that was the first thing I tried. I didn't want to go into great detail about my troubleshooting efforts because I don't think it's quite relevant to the overall discussion.

[_carbyau_]

To add further, those more adventurous can also use Sysinternals free Autoruns utility to find out everything that could start.

Handy hint, it has an option to hide all the default Microsoft stuff so you just see third party.