With a 'clean' windows install, fast processor, 32GB of RAM, fast start on (to cut time in the BIOS) and a modern solid state drive you can be at the Windows 11 desktop in 10 - 15 seconds .

Full BIOS checks every start-up = add 20 secs or 30 with Blu ray drives waking up etc
Small amount of RAM add 10 secs
Slow Processor add 10 secs
Loads of bloatware / un-necessary start up programmes (Yes you DELL) and slow anti-virus etc add another 20 - 30 secs or more

Re anti-virus, a few years ago I discovered my laptop was running both Avast AND Windows Defender and resources had become somewhat precious - I disabled Defender and things sped up quite a lot. More recently I've ditched Avast and use Defender which seems perfectly capable.

However, I do have CCleaner which I run every now and then - a new version uploaded itself earlier this evening, then I noticed that Avast had installed itself - I presume that was an accidental click by me when closing the CCleaner window... Now de-installed...

Sadly, modern anti-virus software has become resource hogging to the point of being near-useless. All the big, well known anti-virus developers are guilty of this.

I have used CCleaner for decades on Windows devices, and whilst it is a good utility, it will always try to load extra cr4p onto your device during a new install, or update, if you let it. Do not allow it to load/update with any self-suggested 'popular' or 'commonly used' modules. Always look for a 'manual' install or update option, and carefully select only what you want from it, otherwise you will end up with unwanted cr4p like Avast, as you have found out. There is other software out there also guilty of this, essentially, dishonest behaviour.

Once you have actioned an update for CCleaner, carefully check it hasn't changed your settings for the utility either, because that sometimes happens. Naturally, any setting changes are always to the advantage of the developer, Piriform.

If you have never done so, also check within CCleaner's Startup section, and I think you will be surprised at the unnecessary stuff which Windows and other software loads into RAM every time your device starts up. Some knowledge, and great care, is needed before disabling startup processes, which CCleaner will allow you to identify and carry out, but if you know what you are doing you can easily prevent many unnecessary things loading in the background (which would otherwise be invisible to you!) and taking up you're PC's perhaps meagre resources, such as RAM.

Finally, if you download CCleaner direct from Piriform's own website (https://www.ccleaner.com/download), and you are only interested in the free version, you will be directed to 3 or 4 different, consecutive pages where the site brazenly tries to persuade you to to download the paid-for version. Persevere and look carefully for the 'no thanks, I just want the free version' links, and you will eventually reach the point where you can simply download the executable file

The free version of CCleaner has more than enough useful modules within it for the Average Joe user, and as I have already stated, it is a useful piece of software, but you just have to patiently negotiate your way around the methods employed by Piriform in trying to put unwanted nonsense on your PC. Like many developers, they are counting on you clicking on the wrong/unwanted thing!

Exactly so Abbey Road, normally I'm quite careful about what I'm clicking... it's like news sites, pop ups appear which you instantaneously think are cookies and it turns out you've subscribed to their newsfeed. Pause 1, 2, 3, scrutinise and then click!

You people all seem to be windo$e victims! I use a 50-dollar Raspberry Pi 5 - 8GB memory, 512 GB storage (those are extra dollars) running Void Linux. It reboots in <17 seconds, from when I read the last post to the login prompt - and login works immediately. Lest you think this is a toy, it drives a 31-inch monitor (and could drive two simultaneously), and runs web browsers, libreoffice, librecad, gimp and many others. I don't play games, I don't edit video but I don't find it at all slow in what I do. Oh, and it drives scanners, printers , dataloggers and anything else you can stick on it. I've never used (or needed to use) anti-virus stuff in 58 years of computing.

This is not meant as a boast: I'm just horrified at what software vendors have done to computers. Microsoft must be the worst but by no means is it the only culprit. Imagine your favourite high-performance sailplane stuffed with half a ton of garbage!

From cold and dark my Lenovo W10 laptop with i7,16Gb of RAM and SSD boots up in 11.7 seconds to the log-in
screen and 1 second after that to the desktop ready to go. It's 3 years old.

Our 2-year-old Acer Aspire laptop with SSD and 13 Gig RAM cold boots in 19 seconds. Our old Dell desktop took two minutes!

- Ed

Me too; they are a menace. The ONLY time in 30 + years of extensive home computing I have lost a drive with Zero warning, and I mean Zero.

I do a system backup every night so no major harm done, but the message is clear: don't trust them.

Maxtor (mechanical) drives were known to do that, as I found out to my cost about 20 years ago.

They've all had issues over time. Hitachi DarkStar drives were affectionately know as DeathStar by IT types. Seagate went through a bad phase, as did WD.