Tech Tips

Do you often find yourself impatiently waiting at your desk at work or home for the computer to hurry up and finish loading the startup process? Yeah, I did too, until I found an easy little tip that helps speed up the process just a bit, and I would be happy to share it with you. With most programs you can usually just close it by clicking on "X" or hit the key combination "Alt + F4" to exit the program, but these commands will not close every program. Sometimes programs will run in the background, and they are normally updaters, configurations, and in most cases virus and spyware scanners. You do not necessarily see these programs running on-screen, but they are working silently behind the scenes. What I will show you in this article is how to remove some programs that may not have a need run in the background, and by doing so you will see an improvement in the startup process. Follow these six simple steps, and you will have gained a few extra minutes in your day!

1) Starting from the desktop with minimal programs running - click on the "start" button > Click on "Run..." and it will bring up a new box that will ask you to type in the program you would like to access

2) In the drop-down box type "msconfig," and click "OK" and it will open up a new box for the "System Configuration Utility" controls

3) Notice the tabs "General, SYSTEM.INI, WINI.INI..." and click on the "Startup" tab that will then display the configuration page that controls what programs load at the initial startup

4) There will be three different columns of program information in this order:

· Startup Item - This column displays the name of each program that is set to load at startup

· Command - This column displays the actual file that will be running at the startup

· Location - This column displays the file's registry/directory information

5) Now for the fun part, after browsing all of the files that are selected you may be confused as to how you will figure out which ones you need, and the ones you do not. One of the programs I have listed on my computer is "tabtip," and my best guess is that is has something to do with the pen feature of my Tablet PC, but how can I know for sure if I should deselect it or not? Google is your friend! I searched for the programs I was unsure and came across a nifty website that stores a growing database of programs for this exact purpose; http://www.processlibrary.com/. ProcessLibrary.com is a great website that lets you simply search for the program you are researching, and then displays what it is, where it is from, and whether or not it is crucial to keep it at startup. Since "tabtip" is a file that runs my tablet and pen settings, such as configuration and pen calibration, it's probably a good idea that I keep it running so that I can quickly access for some on the fly configuration for different situations.

6) Now that you know which programs you do not need at the initial startup, simply uncheck them and then click "Apply" to ensure that the deed is done. Click on "OK" and that box will close opening a new box that instructs that you must "restart your computer in order for the changes to take effect," and you will have the choice to either "Restart" now or "Exit Without Restart." Just remember that you will need to restart your computer to notice the changes if you choose to exit rather than restart.

And that's it! After you have rebooted your computer you should notice an improvement in the startup speed depending on how many programs were running in the background, before you configured the startup management tab. For more information on background programs, be sure to visit ProcessLibrary.com, and remember to complete the steps above regularly after installing new programs. Cheers!