Start up utilities
Most computers start up with a lot of un-needed items. About the only thing you need to start up when your computer boots up is your firewall and antivirus program. There are alot of programs that will start up when you boot and it just slows down your computer.
One computer in my household has 17 startup items, some of which you can see below. I used msconfig to see the startup items.
To use msconfig, go to Start/Run and then type in msconfig, and this will bring up a system utility box.
My computer has 5 startup items:
The msconfig utility can be a bit confusing, and there are a number of start up utilities you can use to disable start up programs.
I have a couple on this computer, but I find with one of them, the disabling is only temporary. I haven’t used the second one, because I’m used to the msconfig utility.
Start Up control panel
The Start Up control panel utility is a small software application that you can access via your control panel, and you can disable startup programs here. It has an easy to use interface, and is similar to msconfig.
If you’re not sure of something in the startup, google it. You can find out about most any program by typing in the startup path. If you’re not comfortable disabling it, don’t.
Other startup utilities:
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner – includes one in their cleaner program. Free program.
http://www.spybot.info – Spybot has one. Free program.
http://www.liutilities.com/ – Speed up my pc has one as well.