Harvey Segal

There are about 20 programs in my Start up list.

Rather than investigate the purpose of each one
would it be safe to disable them all ?

Or are there some basic ones which should always
be left enabled ?

Harvey

ClickBank for Newbies (and Oldies)

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jonhel

Harvey,

There could be a danger if you disable something that is required for Windows to start up or function correctly. I use the msconfig utility and disable items that are safe to do so.

You can generally tell from the name of the program what it is and I usually disable programs automatic startups that I find. In my experience vendors such as Adobe and printer companies are notorious for adding unnecessary stuff which is quite safe to disable.

Hope this helps,


Jonathan

Warrior For Hire - Freelance web developer/troubleshooter/fixer etc. - Affordable website help

Harvey Segal

Hi Jonathan

Yes I am using msconfig.

Although some programs are evident from their name many are
not.

Are you aware of any program which must be required for
Windows to start up. What would happen if it did not ?


Harvey

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abuhakim

Start by cleaning out your Startup folder. Find it in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup, where username is your Windows logon name. Delete the shortcuts of any programs you don't want to run on start-up. As with any shortcuts, when you delete them, you're deleting only the shortcut, not the program itself. (You can also clear out the start-up items by going to Start > Programs > Startup, then right-clicking items you want to remove.)

Complete details at: reviews.cnet.com/4520-10165_7-5554402-1.html#tip1

Good luck!

Bob C

Harvey Segal

A useful link

Thanks Bob

Harvey

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n7 Studios

Harvey,

As already explained, caution must be taken when disabling startup programs from your PC. Certainly removing unused ones will help speed up your PC.

If you're comfortable with what you're doing, Sysinternals (now bought out by Microsoft) have a great set of utilities for helping your PC. Autoruns will list the programs set to run at startup, and give you details of their publisher and further information. To be honest, unless you start messing around with other tabs in the program, the "Logon" tab is all you need, and make sure you leave anything ticked that's to do with Microsoft.

ProcessExplorer is another useful tool by the Sysinternals guys, to tell you what your PC is currently running. Very useful to see if any unsigned programs are running (a common sign of a virus, or poorly coded program that could be hogging your PC's resources!)

CCleaner is a useful tool to clean your temporary files, internet cache and other bits and pieces. Caution should be exercised on cleaning the registry, though.

As I said, all of these tools come with a user warning - unless you're comfortable in what you're doing, it's best not to do it. A quick error when trying to speed up your PC could result in hours of downtime whilst you try to fix it later on.

If I can help any more, do drop me a PM or message here.

Harvey Segal

Thanks n7 Studios

Good advice - and Autoruns looks very useful

Harvey

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doylesoft

Harvey,

I wrote an article about that very issue...
Five Simple Ways To Speed Up Windows XP

As always, use caution, especially in network environments.
Enjoy!

P.S. Thanks for the great help on clickbanksuccessforum.com.
Hopefully 2009 is a great year.

Brandon Doyle
http://doylesoft.com Simple, effective, and affordable software. Knowledge Base software.

Harvey Segal

Thanks Brandon - but I don't understand item (1) in your report

Shouldn't you be referring to the Startup list in the
System Configuration Utility and not the Start Menu ?

Harvey

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doylesoft

I was referring to the actual Programs and 'Program Groups' that display in the Start Menu programs. Three columns of programs is very taxing on the machine and takes bloody ages for the hourglass to go away so you can actually use your machine. That's why right-clicking on the Start button and choosing Open All Users allows you to blow away all those programs from the Start Menu. But be careful. As a rule of thumb, that would work well with your own laptop or home desktop, but I would be careful when doing that to a work or networked computer. Especially clearing things out of the 'startup' folder.

For that matter, always use caution when using msconfig. If you don't know what it is, it is best to leave it or Google it to find out. You will save yourself some big headaches.

Overall though, my article should considerably speed up boot time unless you are dealing with a possible future hard drive failure or some other hardware problem.

Brandon Doyle
http://doylesoft.com Simple, effective, and affordable software. Knowledge Base software.

JamesFraze

There are 3 places that things "autostart"

1. start > run > services.msc
Black Viper's Web Site - read this page and use caution about what to disable

2. start > run > regedit,
Hkey local machine > Software > Microsoft > Windows > Current Version > Run
Hkey user > Software > Microsoft > Windows > Current Version > Run

3. startup folder
start > programs > startup

Look in those places and google each thing you find. Then you can make an intelligent decision about what to delete / move to a backup folder.

a good tool to show you things that autoload is:
HiJackThis. It checks all of the places above and more, but knowing exactly what causes the slow downs by doing it manually is good if you want to understand and get the best possible speedups..

CCleaner is another great disk cleanup tool, but it doesn't help speed much.

You can also optimize windows (assuming it's xp) by:

1. setting the memory cache to the recommended size for min and max (it wont access the disk as often if it's the same size for min/max)

2. start > settings > control panel > system > performance settings > adjust for best performance

3. If possible, move your swap file to a different physical drive than your operating system.

I don't recommend that you use msconfig - it's only temporary and alters the registry in funky ways that make it harder to fix if something truly does go wrong. HiJackThis is a better solution - but read each choice and make a backup first.

Defragging once a month at least is also a good idea. Keep your drives at least 10% free always, they work better when they have free space.


Disclaimer:

Make backups of your data before you attempt any kind of "tweaking" - especially if you are just learning how. I use a program called ghost (Norton), and I copy the drive to anoher drive. That way if my original drive is messed up I dno't have to reinstall anything, I simply clone the bad drive from the backup and in 15 minutes I'm back up and running (portable USB drives are great for ghost) - I only use the DOS version of ghost, not the windows one, that version is useless as a backup method.

Phoenix, AZ Internet Marketing Consultant: (site edits, script installs, php/perl/mysql/xhtml/css coding, split testing, code troubleshooting, wordpress, link building, PPC management, Research, SEO & more for a small monthly fee.)

Harvey Segal

James

Thanks for your comprehensive reply.

Harvey

ClickBank for Newbies (and Oldies)

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Roy Siew

Hi Harvey,

There are quite a few safe ways to speed up your Windows XP boot time. There's an extensive list on what applications to disable to significantly optimize your PC performance. I've a free ebook you could check out, might learn a thing or two.

TweakBoy.Net

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unsmashed

Another thing to look at are the processes running in task manager when your computer first starts up. There are many more places that things "start up" from, including the registry.

Aronya

FWIW, I'm going to disagree with the recommendation to defrag regularly, unless you do a lot of installing/uninstalling of applications and creation/deletion of data. 2 reasons:
1. Never seen it make any appreciable improvement in speed.
2. It blew up my own laptop once. Had to reformat/reinstall to fix. Thank you, Mr. Gates.

One other note. In msconfig, under the Startup tab; you should be able to disable everything there without any concern about whether Windows will have trouble starting.

Citigo Sales

I'm using a software named "Tune-up Utilities" and it helps me a lot.

You can use it to manage your programs, start-up list, theme...

Just give it a shot!

RickyJ

Great article doyle

doylesoft

Thanks!

If I remember correctly, clearing as much as possible from the Startup menu was a BIG difference. Shouldn't really be an issue on new machines. But old single core machines can surely run sluggish after a while.

Brandon Doyle
http://doylesoft.com Simple, effective, and affordable software. Knowledge Base software.

webdevelopmentcompany

I totally agree with you my friend. I am using this application and it works really well in this area as well as other features which it contains. Optimization of this application is also one best feature.

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battery4laptop

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JTor

There's a software called System Mechanic that may help you. It really improved my Windows' start up time and performance.

Here's the link: iolo System Mechanic® - Fix, Speed Up Your PC ...Automatically

It's paid but you can use the full trial for 30 days

John Torquato - http://www.johntorquato.com
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