walpet said:
How can I stop programs from starting right after login so it don't
take so long to load everything?
First of all, I think you should choose what starts automatically at bootup
based on what you want to have running and on what it's overall impact on
performance is (see below) , *not* on how long it takes to start the
computer. Most people start their computers once a day or even less
frequently. In the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up
isn't very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I don't
know how long it took to boot and I don't care.
However, to address your question, 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.
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.
