The present invention, pertaining to the field of computer technologies, discloses an application startup method and apparatus. The method includes: loading, upon receiving an instruction for starting up an application program, prefetch data corresponding to the application program, where the prefetch data includes at least one file block corresponding to at least one page fault occurred during a history startup process of the application program; and loading code of the application program to start up the application program. The apparatus includes: a prefetch data loading module and a code loading module. According to the present invention, the number of page faults occurred during the startup process of the application program because a process cannot be mapped to a valid physical page when accessing a virtual page is greatly reduced. Further, since before the code of the application program is loaded, instead of all file blocks during the initial startup of the application program, only the file block(s) corresponding to page fault(s) is loaded, frequent memory page flipping and file flipping during the loading process of the application program are mitigated, and startup speed and startup efficiency of the application program are improved.