Derek said:
My PC takes 5 minutes or more to boot up. After looking at msconfig
and from there to WINDOWS\SYSTEM\ I found a very large number of
files and folders that I would like to know more about. There are
folders titled $NTunistallKB(number)$, many of them are empty, and
NLS files typically named c_(number), often also empty. What are
they?
They are uninstall files for the various patches and hotfixes you have
installed.
Are they slowing my computer down?
No. Having files on your drive doesn't slow anything down. Only what's
running caan slow you down.
Yes, but then you won;t be able to uninstall those hotfixes if you ever need
to. Unless you are short of disk space, I would leave them alone.
Regarding your slow startup, my personal view is that the attention many
people pay to how long it takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the
computer's speed is otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying
about. 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 if you do want to address it, it may be because of what programs
start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them from starting
that way. 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.
