BillB said:
Is there a list of items that must appear in the Startup tab in
msconfig ?
No. Windows doesn't need any of them, and the only issue is which ones *you*
want or need. Almost certainly you want your firewall, anti-virus,
antispyware programs to start automatically, but beyond that, it's up to
you.
I want to reduce the number of items down to the bare
minimum.
Why? 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.
