What this section changes
Work that starts by itself after sign-in or in the background while you play, and restarts that land mid-match. Turning fast startup off makes boot slower, not faster.
| Setting | What it does | Registry path |
|---|---|---|
| Remove startup delay | StartupDelayInMSec 0 — startup apps load without waiting | HKCU\...\Explorer\Serialize\StartupDelayInMSec |
| Turn off fast startup | A shutdown becomes a real one instead of a hibernation, so a driver problem no longer survives switching off and on again (a restart always was a real one). Boot takes longer | HKLM\...\Session Manager\Power\HiberbootEnabled |
| Turn off background apps | Store apps stop running for updates and notifications while you play | HKCU\...\BackgroundAccessApplications\GlobalUserDisabled |
| Stop sharing updates with the internet (Delivery Optimization) | Windows stops uploading update chunks to machines on the internet over your connection — felt as ping spikes rather than a slow download. Sharing with PCs on your own network stays on, so one household does not download the same update twice. | HKLM\...\DeliveryOptimization\DODownloadMode |
| Let programs take focus immediately | Windows normally refuses focus to a background program and blinks it in the taskbar for two seconds instead. That is unhelpful when a launcher hands over to the game; this removes the delay. | HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ForegroundLockTimeout |
| Stop Windows installing promoted apps by itself | Turns off the mechanism that makes games and trial apps appear in the Start menu on their own. Each of those is a background download and install — the kind that arrives mid-match. Windows Update is untouched. | HKLM\...\Policies\...\CloudContent\DisableWindowsConsumerFeatures |
| Turn off the network usage meter driver (Ndu — Windows' data usage tracking and data limits go with it) | Ndu fills in Task Manager's per-application network column and keeps a record of every process and connection in non-paged pool, which is a known source of pool growth on machines left running for days. What does depend on it is Windows' own Data usage page and the data limit you can set there: with Ndu off, both stop counting, so this one stays off on a machine that is paying by the megabyte. | HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ndu\Start |
| Turn off Recall/Copilot background activity | On Copilot+ machines Recall periodically captures the screen, OCRs it and indexes the result — real background load with no place next to a game. On machines without the feature every value is a harmless no-op; no FPS promised. The 24H2 Copilot app itself can be removed from the Uninstall page. Turning this on also deletes any snapshots Recall has already saved on this PC — the policy does that, and reverting the setting does not bring them back. | HKLM+HKCU\...\Policies\...\WindowsAI\DisableAIDataAnalysis |
| Ask Windows not to restart on its own | The only unrecoverable loss on this page: a restart landing mid-match. A lost match, a lost rank and, in some games, a leaver penalty. This sets active hours to 06:00–00:00 in two places: the policy Microsoft documents for Pro, Enterprise and Education, and Windows' own setting, which is all Home has. Whether Windows 11 keeps to them was not measured: automatic active hours can move the setting back, and the policy asking Windows not to restart while someone is signed in was measured failing overnight, so it is no longer written. Outside active hours Windows can still restart. Updates are neither blocked nor delayed. | HKLM\...\WindowsUpdate\SetActiveHours + UX\Settings\ActiveHours |
Applying it
- Open w0a
- Go to the Regedit Tweaks page in the left menu
- Find this section and press Apply on the entries you want
Every entry has its own button, so you are not required to apply a whole section — Apply All at the top of the page is there for when you do want all of them.
Undoing it
Two ways, both of which work:
- Backups & Restore — puts back the checkpoint written before the change was applied. It
puts back everything applied after that point, later checkpoints included — the confirmation says exactly that before it starts.
- The Fix page — searched by symptom, writes the Windows default unconditionally. It does not
read a backup, so it works even if w0a's own backup file is gone.
The undo log lives at %ProgramData%\w0a\backup.json, outside your user profile.
The risk
Everything here is a documented value Windows supports; none of it is kernel-level and none of it is irreversible. The honest sentence is still this: a setting may have no measurable benefit for you. If you apply a change and feel no difference, you are probably right — these pages are not selling you a feeling, they are telling you what was changed.
If you want to measure it, the rule from reading the benchmark applies: change one thing at a time, and read the lows rather than the average.
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