Changing your startup program list

Do you remember when you bought that brand spanking new Windows computer and it booted up in under 10 seconds? You were so darn proud of your new computer that you would restart it just to show off it's speed to your friends.

Well, it ran with face melting speed for about a week, and then it started to take longer, and longer to start up. Most people just dismiss it and think there is nothing they can do, but I'm going to show you how to gain back that speed your computer once had.

One of the main reason a computer takes so long to start up is that, inevitably over time you will install new programs and applications on your computer (I know you, downloading crap from every nether region of the far corners of the internet). Many of these programs will want to start up with your computer every time you turn it on, or they install a quick loader in your tool bar so they can start up faster. They also install update managers, and other programs that want to run when you start your computer.

I'm going to show you how to access your computers start up manager so you can decide what programs get to start with your computer, and which ones don't.

Step 1

Go to your start menu and start the Run process

Step 2

Type "msconfig" (without the parenthesis) in the text box and click OK

Step 3

A window titled System Configuration Utility will open, click the Startup tab.

You will now have a list of all programs that are scheduled to run on startup, the list will include the name of the startup process, the command, and the location of the program.

I should note that unless you are very familiar with the Windows commands and processes, you probably will be unfamiliar with a lot of processes and think "I don't know what that is, so I should delete it!". STOP right there, if you don't know what one of the items is. There are very fragile and important processes in this list and if you go deleting things willy-nilly you will almost definitely ruin your machine.

Some common items you can disable to help with the speed of your machine are: iTunesHelper and QTTask (Quick Time). If you don't know what one of the programs is, Google it. Google is your friend and you can out what almost anything is by Googling it.

I recommend checking out  www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/. The site has list of common Windows processes (and what they do), including System Processes, Application Processes, Malware Processes, and others.

As always, if you need any help, leave a comment or send me a message. I hope you learned something useful from this tutorial and you'll check out some of my other SpongeFish content.

 The Uber Maker