Windows 7 Eliminate Auto Start Programs

Probably the most common thing that slows down Windows’ loading time is all of the programs that are configured to load at boot time. Not only do they take a while to load, but they commonly eat up processor cycles while they’re running, which in turn causes other programs to load more slowly.

Open the Performance Information and Tools page in Control Panel, and click the Advanced tools link on the left. If you see an alert that reads, “Startup programs are causing Windows to start slowly,” click the link to view details. The entry corresponds to a single incident in the event log, in which a particular program took longer to boot than usual. But despite the lone alert here, and its Date reported indicating that the incident happened months ago, there may be many similar entries in the log, some more recent than others.

Click the View details in the event log link to fire up Event Viewer (eventvwr.msc), and then click the Date and Time column header to sort the list chronologically. Since delays that happened weeks ago aren’t of much concern, focus on those from the last few days. If one program stands out asa repeat offender, try the Level column header to group the events by severity.

There’s more running on your PC than the handful of icons in the notification area (tray) suggests, and there are several places where startup programs are specified in addition to the Startup folder in your Start menu.

Manage Startup ProgramsThe Startup folder in the Start menu is where most people go if they want Windows to start an application automatically when it boots. Just drag a shortcut to the program into the folder, and Windows will do the rest. Or, delete an existing shortcut to stop a program from loading at boot time.

Trouble is, there are many ways apart from the Startup folder to configure startup programs, and if you’re trying to solve a problem or just reduce boot times, you need to look at them all. To see them all in one place, open the System Configuration tool (msconfig.exe) and choose the Startup tab. Uncheck any programs you’d rather not have running, and click Apply. Also available is the free Autoruns tool (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx), which, among other things, has a command-line tool you can use to make changes when Windows won’t start.

Here are all the places Windows looks for startup items:
Startup folders

There are actually two of these on your hard disk, but shortcuts in both places show up in the Startup menu (under All Programs in your Start menu). If you have a lot of cleanup to do, you’ll find it’s easier to open Windows Explorer than to repeatedly open the Start menu. First, your
personal Startup folder is located here:

C:Users{username}AppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart
MenuProgramsStartup
and programs listed therein will load automatically when you first log in to your user account. Next, the “All Users” Startup folder here:
C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsStartup

lists the programs to load automatically when anyone logs into your PC.

By krawl23