Startup Programs Slow Your Computer

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A silent killer of modern operating systems is the set of programs and services (a special kind of program) that starts running silently when the computer starts. By the time you can get to your desktop after starting your computer, there could be 20 programs and 20 more services running - no wonder your computer is slow! This is a very simple concept: the more programs running, the slower the program you are interested in will run. This is one of the simple secrets to prevent computer problems and prevent a broken computer.

Today, let's first take a look at the programs running when your computer starts. The meat of this discussion will focus on Windows, but there are similar tools in other operating systems. For example, in Ubuntu Linux, navigate to System/Preferences/Startup Applications.

Back to the Windows world. Microsoft hides a very helpful list of these startup programs in a program called msconfig. Once the utility is opened, these programs can be located under the Startup tab. When you reach that tab, those programs can be removed from the list of programs that starts at boot-up time simply by deselecting the corresponding checkbox! That is the easy part.

How do you know which ones are safe to disable? Use a database such as the one at BleepingComputer - open that website and type in the name (far left column, next to the checkbox) of the program listed in the Startups tab of msconfig, and if the Status column has anything but "Y" then it can be safely de-selected. Additional clues can be found simply by searching for the program name in Google, and looking at the folder it's installed in within msconfig.

Often times, programs are configured to start up so that their "environment" is ready when you want the application. As an example, Adobe Reader includes a program with the sole purpose of helping Adobe Reader to start faster (reader_sl.exe), but which consumes your computer's resources! Ultimately we recommend replacing Adobe Reader because it is entirely bloated and slow, but more on that later-uncheck the reader_sl.exe entry in msconfig! Watch for the follow-up piece about operating system Services.