What programs MUST be in startup list?

On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:16:00 +0000, georgeinirvingf wrote:

My PC boot-upis sluggish. I want to eliminate as many items as possible from startup list.

To cover your question in the subject line first, there are none

that must be in the startup list. Which ones you start automatically

is up to you (although almost certainly you should want your security

software to start automatically).

Wanting to "eliminate as many items as possible from startup list" is

very much the wrong thing to do, as far as I'm concerned. The issue

with startup programs is which, not how many.

Here's my standard reply on this subject:

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it

takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is

otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying about. Most

people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In

the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't

very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the

morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I

don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what

programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them

from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start

automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to

start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not

just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped

that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run

line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to

start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of

running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell

you, you should be concerned, not with how many of these programs

you run, but which. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but

others have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do

is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what

the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get

more information about these with internet searches and asking about

specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed

decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

Ken Blake

What programs MUST be in startup list?

There is no definative answer to that without detailed knowledge of your system and installed programs

If your PC has sufficient memory and free disk space, unless an auto start program is an 'iffy' one it should make much difference.

Any programs that are shown in the Task bar, after starting, if you check their options, there may be a setting to stop autoloading.

Depending which Anti Virus / Firewall app you have, some can be resource hogs

You better be careful since if you disable too many and/or the wrong Services, you may render your system inoperable or have other problems like this fellow:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-system/i-was-an-idiot-and-accidentally-disabled-crucial/42714354-d54f-405c-bb1d-11fdf7e237ba

In cases like that and if you are just guessing, you need to only do one or two things at a time rebooting in between adjustments and keep track (write it down) of what you are disabling so in the event your system does not boot again you have a plan for how to fix it using something like the XP Recovery Console where you can enable any Services that you should not have disabled.  Always have a plan for "what am I going to do if my system does not boot again after this".

If you are looking at Services, you can find a good place to get started here:

http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-xp-x86-32-bit-service-pack-3-service-configurations/

It is probably NOT Services that are slowing you down, but you might be able to disable some of them.

If your system is slow to boot, I would use software to measure and analyze your boot process now, then make a few adjustments and measure it again.  Using tools, you can "see" what things are taking the most time on your boot process and then you can make intelligent decisions about do yo need that stuff starting or not, make an adjustment, measure it again.  Lather, rinse and repeat.  There is no guessing.

I can see that it takes my system exactly 22.03.024 seconds to boot, but I have zero startup items configured at boot time.  That may not be the right configuration for everybody, but I am all about looking for better performance.  I check it every once in a while to be sure that in the process of installing uninstalling stuff all the time, no other startup items have snuck in.

A problem here (as usual in the MS Answers forums) is we don't know much about your system.

You can use something like CCleaner to generate a list of all your startup items so you can see it, log it, post it for others to look at and give you ideas and from there you can disable things one at a time (disabling does not uninstall anything), measure your time again until you have done your best.

Here is some general ideas to get you started:

What is your system make and model?

What is your XP Version and Service Pack?

Describe your current antivirus and anti malware situation:  McAfee, Symantec, Norton, Spybot, AVG, Avira!, MSE, Panda, Trend Micro, CA, Defender, ZoneAlarm, PC Tools, Comodo, etc.

Since most systems seem to have many startup items that are not needed, perhaps you can eliminate some startup items. 

On my system, I have zero startup items, zero non Microsoft Services starting and I have disabled many non essential Microsoft Services.  That may not be practical for everybody, but the chances are pretty good that most systems have some things starting that do not need to be starting, and some of them take a long time to start.

Then tell us what all your startup items are and we can help you look at them to see if there are some that you can might not need.

Here is one way to provide a list of your startup items:

Download and install CCleaner from here:

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

CCleaner will let you manage most Startup items and also do some other cleanup oriented operations.  Some people will recommend you not to use the registry functions in CCleaner so avoid those features for now.  I have no issue with it myself, but it is sometimes a contentious issue I prefer to avoid whenever possible!

Launch CCleaner and click Tools, Startup and in the bottom right of the screen, click the "Save to text file" button to save the Startup information to a text file (name it something like startup.txt so you can find it).

Open the text file with a text editor (Notepad or WordPad), select all the text (Ctrl-A) copy it (Ctrl-C) and and paste (Ctrl-V) the contents of the startup list back here for analysis.

Uninstall CCleaner later if you don't like it (most people seem to like it for it's other features).

Here is what my startup.txt file looks like:

That's right - empty... but you may have a few things, but most folks have more things than they need.  I run lean!

You should measure your startup time before making any changes to you can see what happens when you make adjustments.  I can get paid $1 for every second I can take off a boot time (up to $50).   In order to get paid, I would like to say here is the before time and here is the after time.  If your boot time increases, there is no charge!

I believe I could just take a system into the back room for an hour or so, do nothing, give it back to the person and they would say, yes - that's a lot faster (psychologically)!   So I like to measure things.

Here is a good free tool to use to measure your boot time that does not install any startup items to slow you down later, so use it to see what your boot time is now, then make a few adjustments (not too many all at once) and run it again.  You will also have a nice bar graph so you can see what takes a log time to start and then decide if you really need it loading or not:

BootlogXP:

http://www.greatis.com/utilities/bootlogxp/

Set your system up to login automatically (if it is not already) so there is no human component involved in your startup timing (test that part first), run BootlogXP and it will ask you to restart and be patient as it works, then it will give you a nice bar chart and the total boot time so you can write it down (or print it).  What are all those big horizontal lines in the graph and who it taking the most time and do you really need them?!   Write a few of those down too.

In the chart, you would be looking for long horizontal lines that show you how long each startup process takes then you can decide what to do about it/them.

You can also generate and export a report that you can save, share it, print it, etc.  If you can't figure it out or have questions, export the short text file report to a text file and copy and paste the contents of just the short text file report back here for analysis and suggestions.  Just send the short text report, not the long text report.  The short text report.

Then when you start to make adjustments, you can run the Boot Log XP tool again and see what effects your adjustments have on your startup time.

There are also other free tools you can use to analyze and optimize your system startup, but you need to actually measure it to see what is going on and if any adjustments are moving things in the right direction.

Soluto: (I have not tried it) http://www.soluto.com/

On Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:28:40 +0000, bobnametaken wrote:

TTo Ken,

"Some of them can hurt performance severely" What are these programs in xp? Can yor list  the questionable services that have been known to consume more than 40 seconds or more. I then could do a through examination of their function?

I don't have any particular programs in mind. There are many that are
in each of the two categories. You need to examine each of the
programs you have autostarting to see which category it falls into.

Ken Blake