Disabling Computer Start Up Items
When your computer has been around for a while you may find that things start to get very slow. Booting up your computer used to take about 20 seconds now it’s possibly taking 20 minutes. The likely cause is too many start up items.
Start up items are programs that automatically load when your computer starts. It is meant for your convenience but most are not needed at start up at all. In fact, over times as this list of start up programs grow, your computer buckles under the strain and almost grinds to a halt.
So what can be done about this?
We firstly, remove any programs you do not actually use from the control panel’s add remove programs.
There is bound to be programs that you still need in this list and you do not want to go removing them. At the same time you do not need them to start up every time your computer loads. The simplest way around this is to use MSCONFIG.
MSCONFIG is accessed by going to start then to run and typing “msconfig”. Here you will have a new window appear showing all sorts of information. For the purpose of this article you will need to click on the start up tab.
All the entries listed here are the programs that start up with your computer – you may be surprised at how many of them there are. Some are essential such as your antivirus and firewall so be careful not to disable these.
Items that you really do not need starting up could be MSN messenger as an example or annoying, pointless start up programs like QuickTime etc. By disabling these from start up does not stop you using them. They still exist on your computer but you only load them when you need them rather than them running all night and day.
Once you have disabled all but the important start up items you will need to restart your computer. Hopefully this time it should be much much faster. The config window will still pop up but you can tick to not show this again and close it.
Check this periodically as viruses such as trojans or other computer nasties can show themselves in this window. Worst case situation, if you disable something and your computer does not work as expected, repeat the steps and re-enable whatever is causing your fault.
Share This
