natsun said:
Can some kind person please tell me or mail me just what is really
required in the system tray when windows starts up or shuts down?
I have numerous icons in my system tray that surely aren't necessary
to run on startup or shut down?
So when I run msconfig....... what is the minimum requirement or
rather what is required, to make start up etc much quicker.
Note several points.
1. First, note that you should be concerned with *all* programs that start
automatically, not just with those that go into the system tray. Not all
autostarting programs manifest themselves by an icon in the tray.
2. There is no minimum requirement. You should have only those *you* want
there, and your needs are different from everyone else's. If you connect to
the internet, certainly you should have things like an antivirus program and
firewall running to protect you, but beyond that it's largely up to you.
3. 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.
4. However assuming that you want to address the question of what starts
automatically (because such programs *can* affect your entire performance,
not just startup time), read on.
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.
