Tuesday, June 23, 2015

See What Starts on Startup

Does your computer seem to take forever to start up each time you turn it on?  One of the biggest causes of slow startups is programs that are scheduled to start each time you start your computer.  Some of these programs have legitimate reasons for loading when you start the computer; for example, you want your antivirus to start automatically when you turn your computer on.  However, others are only loading for reasons of convenience.  One program loaded a large percentage of itself into memory each time the computer started just so that it could start slightly faster when you opened the program.  If you did not need the program that day, it still sat around and hogged resources.

To see a list of what starts when you start your computer, follow these instructions.  In Windows Vista/7, go to the search box on the start menu and type "msconfig.exe".  Click on the "Startup" tab to see the list.  From here, you can uncheck boxes of programs that you do not want to load at startup.  In Windows 8, type Ctrl + Alt + Delete and select "Task Manager".  Click on the "Startup" tab.  From here, you can select items you do not want to load at startup and then choose "Disable" in the bottom.

Do not start unchecking everything.  As I mentioned earlier, you obviously want your antivirus to load at startup.  Most of your drivers (programs that allow Windows to communicate with hardware components) will not appear here, but there may be one or two in the list.  Disabling these may cause components to stop functioning properly.  However, if there are programs that you installed that have no legitimate reason to be running on startup, you can disable them.

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