deleting quickstarts from taskbar

[philbansal]

hi, everyone. i have a few programs that launch quickstarts from teh
taskbar. i figure they slow down my boot-up time. i'd like to
permanently remove them from my taskbar, but i can't see how to. the
control panel offers nothing. do you know how to do that?

thanks
phil bansal

 

[Curt Christianson]

Hi Phil,

The QuickLaunch icons on the taskbar are merely shortcuts to the
applications themselves. They should not slow down your boot-up time.

HTH,
--
Curt BD-MVBT
http://dundats.mvps.org/
http://dundats.proboards27.com/index.cgi
http://www.aumha.org/
| hi, everyone. i have a few programs that launch quickstarts from teh
| taskbar. i figure they slow down my boot-up time. i'd like to
| permanently remove them from my taskbar, but i can't see how to. the
| control panel offers nothing. do you know how to do that?
|
| thanks
| phil bansal
|

 

[Rock]

hi, everyone. i have a few programs that launch quickstarts from teh
taskbar. i figure they slow down my boot-up time. i'd like to
permanently remove them from my taskbar, but i can't see how to. the
control panel offers nothing. do you know how to do that?

Do you mean there are programs running at startup that are placing an icon
on the right side of the taskbar in what's called the notification area?
Some startup programs do that, others do not.

To eliminate programs from starting with XP, open task manager: right click
a blank area of the taskbar and click on Task Manager. Look on the process
tab to see what's running. Research what each one is. Some are essential
system processes you shouldn't mess with. Here are some research sites to
help with this.

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

After you find out what each one is/does, then you can decide if you want it
to run. It's not so much how many are running as what they are. Once you
know which ones you don't want to run the first step should be to check in
the options for the program to 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

For anything else uncheck their entries in the startup tab of Msconfig:
Start | Run | Msconfig | Ok

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 using a program like ERUNT
before making any changes to the registry.

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

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

hi, everyone. i have a few programs that launch quickstarts from teh
taskbar. i figure they slow down my boot-up time. i'd like to
permanently remove them from my taskbar, but i can't see how to. the
control panel offers nothing. do you know how to do that?

Are you asking about programs that start automatically when you boot the
computer, and place icons for themselves in the System Notification Area
(aka System Tray), near the clock?

If so, read on.

First, note that you should be concerned with *all* programs that start
automatically, not just with those that go into the tray. Not all
autostarting programs manifest themselves by an icon in the tray.

On each program you don't want to start automatically, check its Options to
see if it has the choice not to start (make sure you actually choose the
option not to run it, not just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily
and best be stopped that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the
Start | Run line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't
want to start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of running
the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell you, you
should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs you run, but
*which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but others have no
effect on performance.

They may slow down your boot time, but a few extra seconds to boot up is
inconsequential, considering that most of us do this once a day or so. What
is important is what they do your overall performance by running all the
time, and how important it is to *you* to have them running.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do is
determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what the cost
in performance is of its running all the time. You can get more information
about these at http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it
there, try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.