Monday, September 04, 2006
Oh how Windows programs love to cram themselves into your startup process. Don’t you hate how that slows your boot times enough so that the 7:45am lineup at Starbucks seems to go faster than watching latest Japanese commercial on Youtube?
You can put a stop to that unadulterated abuse of your system now.
Use “System Configuration Utility” (MSCONFIG) to look up and halt startup programs.
Invoke it by clicking Start, Run and then type in msconfig.exe followed by enter.
Once the window is displayed click on the Startup tab. You will see a list of items and the 2 columns that we’re interested in are “Startup Item” and “Command”.
You may need to drag the top columns to the right to extend it for viewing the full name.
Some of the filenames may seem cryptic, to figure out what those names mean, go to Processlibrary.com for explanations on all running processes.
Check off the items you do not want to start up on every reboot. Chances are you will find a lot of junk in there that are totally unnecessary. Programs that you hardly ever use and some that do nothing to speed launch of the application.
Alternatively you may try the Windows Startup folder and see what shortcuts are there but it usually is incomplete as many of the startup processes are hidden and can only be displayed in the MSCONIG utility.
If you really want to have a look anyways go to Start, All Programs, Startup.