Startup items

[Guest]

My startup eems to be slow. How can I determine what is being loaded at
startup and how can I safely remove them from my registry?
If I do remove them, what harm may I be doing and will they run if I
actually need them?
When I look at "task master" and "processes", it's like reading Greek. I
have no idea what all those things are that are running.
Thanks!

 

[Tom Porterfield]

My startup eems to be slow. How can I determine what is being loaded at
startup and how can I safely remove them from my registry?
If I do remove them, what harm may I be doing and will they run if I
actually need them?
When I look at "task master" and "processes", it's like reading Greek. I
have no idea what all those things are that are running.
Thanks!

Click Start, Run, type in msconfig.exe and click OK. This will launch the
system configuration utility. Go to the startup tab to see a list of
everything that loads automatically at startup. There you can also safely
disable an item from loading at startup by removing the check next to the
item on that tab. Reboot and see if that makes a difference. If there are
any issues with an application, you can easily re-enable its entry by
running msconfig.exe again and putting a check back next to that item on on
the startup tab.

 

[Tracy]

Open msconfig.
start, run, msconfig
click on the Start Up tab and start removing the unwanted check marks.
Things like qttask (which is quicktime), real audio, your printers,
reminders....all SORTS of stuff can be unchecked.

If you find you uncheck something by mistake, you can always go back in and
put a check back in the box.

Tracy

 

[Rock]

My startup eems to be slow. How can I determine what is being loaded at
startup and how can I safely remove them from my registry?
If I do remove them, what harm may I be doing and will they run if I
actually need them?
When I look at "task master" and "processes", it's like reading Greek. I
have no idea what all those things are that are running.

Though you can use msconfig to disable start up items, that is best used
only for diagnostics. Once you decide what you don't want to start and want
that change to be permanent, I recommend removing that program from the
place where it is being called to start. At the bottom of this post I have
listed some research sites to use if you don't understand what the program
are that are in msconfig. Once you know what they are you can make an
informed decision. Do not disable any services on the services tab in
msconfig.

To stop a program from starting the first step should be to check in the
options for the program you don't want to start and see if there is a
setting to tell it not to run at startup. The next step is to remove any
entries you don't want from the two startup folders:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Another option is to remove the reference to them from one of these keys in
the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

Make sure you have a backup of the registry key you want to modify before
doing so. In regedit highlight the key you want to change, and go to File |
Export to save a copy of the key. Best is to use a program like ERUNT to
backup up the complete registry before making any changes to it.

ERUNT
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt

Installing and Using ERUNT
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_eruntuse.html
http://www.winxptutor.com/regback.htm

Research sites
www.google.com
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm