Has your Windows computer lost its oomph? Do you turn your computer on, leave the room, make some coffee and a snack because you can’t sit there while it starts up? If you have teenagers, you may also sit down to a desktop full of messenger windows (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc) waiting for you to chat away. Do you have more than 10 icons running on the lower right of your task bar when expanded? How about pop-ups, do you seem to have a few too many? If you have answered yes to some of these questions then your computer probably responds very much like many of the computers I have been dealing with for the last several years. In the next few articles I am going to cover some things you can do to free up your system resources, so they are available for the task you actually choose to run. In this first part, I am going to cover the basics. I am going to assume your machine is not infected with spyware or viruses, although it could very well be. I will cover virus and spyware removal in and upcoming article.

Remove Those Startup Programs

It seems almost any program you install these days, has a background process and a tray icon on startup. These are almost never necessary for the program to run, but they are installed just the same. When I am working on a computer that a customer has asked me to “clean up” for them, I remove almost all startup programs, leaving only anti-virus and sometimes scanner / printer related software. I realize this is probably common knowledge for some, but we are starting at the basics here and working our way up. I should mention also, that there are often times many ways to accomplish the same task in windows. For this task we will use msconfig.

“Windows Key” + “R” will bring up the run/open window

In the “Open” field type msconfig (this has been available since Windows 98) I have run into machines that have lost their msconfig, maybe due to AV quarantine. On Vista, you may need to confirm by clicking “continue”.

This command should have brought up a window similar to the image shown above. Click the Startup tab, not Services, we will look at this later. Keep in mind you can always come back and re-enable things, so don’t be afraid to shut stuff down, that’s why we are here.

You can see the Startup Item, Manufacturer and the Command path. This should give you a good idea of what each program/process is. My recommendation is to shut things down and then re-enable them as needed. You can safely remove AOL, Yahoo, Adobe, PC Manufacturers, Quicktime, Steam and more from your startup. You are not removing the programs; you are only stopping them from starting when your machine starts. Remove the check mark next to those items you wish to remove from your system startup, and click the OK button. Now go ahead and restart your machine.


Once rebooted, you will see a message indicating your system configuration has changed. Click “don’t show again” and OK. If you wish to remove more startup items, repeat this process and look for the specific program you wish to stop or shut everything off, and reneable one by one. Conversely, if you find something is not working, and you would like it to, enter msconfig > startup, re-enable the item and restart the machine.

If you still have nagging programs starting up, it could be located in your services (startup), or it could be a virus, or spyware related program that is designed to keep coming back. We will cover this in the next article, so check back soon. If found this article helpful, please use the social bookmark bar below to help other people find it.