I've heard that you can increase how fast your computer starts up by preventing a program from starting automatically as your computer restarts. How do you do this?

What is your OS?

Oh, sorry. It's Windows Vista.

To stop startup programs from running, look for "system configuration" in the search bar located after clicking the Windows button. When the program opens you will see five tabs; you're looking for startup. You will now see a sting of items with check boxes next to their name. "You can choose to disable some of these programs but before you do that please make sure you do not disable any important system components or drivers. You might damage the functionality of the operating system. If you are not sure on what you are doing it is better not to disable any startup programs.

 

If you know what you are doing and which programs you want to disable, just uncheck the small box from the left side of the appropriate programs. When you have finished, click Apply and/or OK ^[1]"

 

If you want, you can take a screenshot of the startup tab and we can tell you want you can disable.

Start -> run/search -> [type] msconfig [hit enter]

 

Start up tab.

Deselect any which you don't need. Programs like google update, java update, adobe reader speed launch, etc. Avoid disabling anything you don't know about.

The advanced way.

 

Click on the start button, also known as the Windows Orb.

 

On the start menu, type in msconfig in the start menu search feature as shown in the image below.

 

If you've typed it correctly it will bring up msconfig in the search list as the image shows above.

 

When it appears click on it to open it.

 

After you've opened msconfig, click on the startup tab as shown in the image below.

 

The start up tab allows you to select which programs you would like to start up with Windows. When disabling a program make sure it's not important to you or your Computer, like soundcard software, Video Card software, Anti Virus protection, etc.

 

If you don't feel comfortable with this don't threat, theres software on the market which simplify's this task. One I would recommend is tune up utilities, it not only simplify's this task for you but it also has some handy features as well.

 

Good luck.

Actually, you can disable everything if you want, I've done it for the lan party I had, to get the full power of my computer with the bare minimum of programs running, so you can disable anything you want, remember that you should keep your AV and such still checked though.

Okay, I just disabled some start-up programs (QuickTime, MSN, Google Desktop, iTunes, etc), and it's a little faster.

 

Thanks.

Vista uses Superfetch to load parts of your commonly used programs into RAM at boot time, but if you have less than 3GB of memory I have found this has an impact on system performance. Use THIS GUIDE to disable superfetch.