This is a problem that plagues many computer users. As time goes by and you install more software, things start to get bogged down. There’s a lot of software out there that seems to think so highly of itself that it must start up every time you boot your computer. Shouldn’t you be making decisions about your software, instead of letting your software make decisions for you?
You can stop programs from starting automatically by removing them from your system’s Startup List. You can access and edit the Startup List through a program called “System Configuration Utility”, or “msconfig”. To get into msconfig, do the following:
for Windows XP
- Click Start.
- Click Run.
- Type msconfig.
When the System Configuration Utility window opens, look at the set of tabs across the top of the window. Find the last tab, labeled “Startup”, and click it. This will show you the Startup List, which contains all of the items that start automatically when you boot your computer and Windows begins to load.
Now, you can freely comb through this list and remove programs that don’t necessarily need to load when your computer boots up. When finished, you’ll need to reboot before your changes can take effect.
for Windows 7
Type in msconfig in to the start menu or run box and load this utility. Once it has appeared, please click on the startup tab:
You will now see a list of applications that start each time your computer boots. Unticking each row will prevent it from loading the next time you boot your PC, once you've clicked "ok". You may need to research each entry on this list before removing it, as some items you will still want to load. In this example, only 6 out of 19 items were actually required (and this is on a fairly clean PC!).
