Getting Rid of Useless Start-Up Programs

One of the simplest things that you can do to speed up your computer is to take control of the start-up programs, which are programs which automatically run when Windows starts. When I did this, the change was so dramatic that I fall I had the complete answer to “why is my computer so slow?” I later found out that there was more to the situation, but this one step really made a huge difference.

When Windows is newly installed on a computer, there are only a few programs that automatically start when your computer boots up. Over time, as you add more programs, this list can grow and grow until you have dozens of programs starting up by themselves each time Windows starts. Each of these programs will usually create an icon in the right hand side of the taskbar, although there will be some that don’t do this. It can get so cluttered that you need to click on an arrow to see them all.

When your computer is starting, you will need to wait for all of these programs to load up, which can take a long time. What’s more, with each one of these programs using up system resources, it can really slow your computer down.

The sad thing is that many of these programs are not really doing you any good. In other words they’re not programs that you often need or use. Luckily, it’s relatively easy to configure your computer so that it will not load these programs at start-up.

All you need to do is use the Windows system configuration tool. You can access this in Windows XP by clicking on “Start”, then on run, and typing in msconfig. Once you’ve done this, press enter and then Windows will launch the system configuration tool.

In Vista, it is a little bit easier to access the config tool. Just click on the Windows symbol in the taskbar, to access the start menu. Then type msconfig in the search box at the bottom and hit return.

There is a tab of all the different start-up programs, so click on this and then you will be able to control which program start-up. You will see a list of all the programs, with a checkbox next to each one. Just uncheck the programs that you want to stop. If you are not sure what the program does, and you don’t want to stop it if it is important, there is a website which lists all of the most common programs and tells you what they do. You can see this list at http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

Once you’re done, just press apply, and then restart your computer. You will find all of these useless start-up programs are now deactivated. This step alone can do a lot to speed up your computer.