Hi. Over the past 6 months, my laptop has become incredibly slow. I have
found out about the MSCONFIG utility and find that when I disable most of the
services and startup items, it runs much quicker. Questions are:
- what is the downside of disabling? If I launch an application for which
I have disabled something, will it work any differently?
- How can I permanently delete some of the junk stuff I have in the
services and startup tabs?
Thanks
Arjay
Personally, I use MSCONFIG as a watchdog to see what new items have sneaked
into startup. There are some things that I want running - mostly things
that provide added support for my hardware or antivirus. However, I also
allow a few convenience items - programs that I use every day. For the
unwanted items, I track those back to the main programs and disable them in
the program's own menu options.
You can use MSCONFIG to toggle programs on and off at startup instead of
digging in the menus but:
a) sometimes a program will add itself back - now you have multiple items
in MSCONFIG for the same program
b) you'll be running with "selective startup." Not a big problem but clouds
the issue when you need to troubleshoot startup problems.
c) it's just "neater."
For your other question about running programs manually - that's fine.
Would suggest leaving antivirus running but for something like "scanner"
software - you don't need this unless you scan documents and pictures every
day. Instead, manually start the scanner's software when you are going to
scan.
I would stay away from the Services tab in MSCONFIG. In my opinion, this is
useful only for seeing which services are not MS services. If there are
services that you want to disable, use Computer Management> Services
instead. Be careful here, the purpose of some services is not apparent and
other services may depend on them running.
