What this section changes
Speeds up boot and stops work that starts itself in the background while you play.
| 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 driver problems no longer survive a reboot | HKLM\...\Session Manager\Power\HiberbootEnabled |
| Turn off background apps | Store apps stop running for updates and notifications while you play | HKCU\...\BackgroundAccessApplications\GlobalUserDisabled |
| Turn off update sharing (Delivery Optimization) | Windows stops uploading updates to other machines over your connection — felt as latency spikes rather than a slow download | 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. | HKLM+HKCU\...\Policies\...\WindowsAI\DisableAIDataAnalysis |
| Block automatic restarts while you play | 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 stops Windows restarting by itself while someone is signed in and widens active hours to the largest window Windows accepts (06:00–00:00). Updates are neither blocked nor delayed — you just choose when the restart happens. | HKLM\...\WindowsUpdate\AU\NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers + UX\Settings\ActiveHours |
Applying it
- Open w0a
- Go to the Regedit Tweaks page in the left menu
- Find this section, tick the settings you want, apply
Every setting is individually selectable — you are not required to apply a whole section.
Undoing it
Two ways, both of which work:
- Backups & Restore — puts back the checkpoint written before the change was applied. It
reverts what that group changed and touches nothing else.
- 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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