Using MSCONFIG to Help Speed Up Your Computer

Sometimes I find myself wanting to kick and scream at my computer because it is running so slow. Or, the Internet decides to drop a Web page that I'm trying to look at. Or, that e-mail that clicked to open just sits there staring me in the face, laughing as it waits to pull up! Not to mention the endless pop-ups! I got tired of all those things happening to my system.

So it came down to a few choices at that point: Reinstall Windows (which is something I wasn't prepared to do at that point) Or, search for alternatives that would help speed up my system. So I set out on a search to see what could be done.

After hours and hours of searching and speaking with friends I came up with some ideas that can help speed up my computer while keeping all my pictures, movies, games, and documents intact. To my relief I was able to speed my system up to the point where it wasn't unbearable to work with.

So here is one thing that I did to help with my computer woes. These steps were done on Windows XP and will work with any version of XP, Vista, Windows ME and Windows 98.

Msconfig is the utility that helped the most out of all the settings I changed. Those icons that seem to clutter the task bar by the clock and just appear out of nowhere can slow your system down drastically. So msconfig allows you to turn those off so that they aren't running all the time. Granted, there are a few you may want to run, but the majority of those programs can be disabled. Here is what I did to use that utility.

First off, click on start, then run. In the box that appears I typed in msconfig, then pressed ok. Now the actual utility that appears does have several options on it. The only one we will worry with right now is the tab that says startup on the top right side. Click on that and then there should be another button that says Disable All. Once you have done that you can press apply, then press close. That will prompt you to restart your computer, which you can do at that time. Once the system has restarted you will get a message that has information on it regarding what you did to make changes. Generally you can just put a check in the box that says "don't show this again" and just press ok and go about your business to see if it helps with the slowness or not.

If you find yourself wondering what was disabled and have no idea what program it was, there is a helpful website that contains information on thousands of entries for msconfig. http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php is the website that I've found very helpful in determining what those items are. Microsoft also provides technical information on how to troubleshoot using msconfig as well http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560.

Hopefully this information will be as helpful for you as it was for me!