When troubleshooting any version of Windows, learning what applications and processes are loading on startup is a critical step. To this end, the old and faithful MSCONFIG application is a great help, and it’s definitely present in Windows Vista too. Just go Start, Run, MSCONFIG and you’re there.

However times change, and while MSCONFIG is a very useful little utility, there are better options available. Enter Autoruns. Developed by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell of Winternals (now Sysinternals and owned by Microsoft), Autoruns is a fantastic freeware app which does a full scan of your system and presents you with a total rundown of everything that happens on system startup and system logon. (more…)

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When people write programs, most of them design their product to automatically launch at the systems startup. Is it really necessary for these programs to be running? Only key programs such as anti-virus and firewall programs need to be running at system startup. The other programs should be re-configured to start only when needed.

Having a lot of programs running at once is very taxing to your system resources and if enough of them are running can cause errors in your operating system, usually memory type errors. Another noticeable problem is a slowing in your boot process. Do you have a computer that is taking a couple of minutes to boot up? (more…)

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