There’s nothing like waking up in the morning and doing your morning routine. Making breakfast, turning on the computer to check emails, maybe watch the news, or grab the trash can from the street. Then after all of your tasks you come back to your computer and find that it is STILL turning on! Okay, well, I guess it usually isn’t this drastic of a situation but everyone experiences a slowed down computer at least once in their “computer careers.”

This morning I decided it was time for some system wide maintenance on my desktop PC. Startup was lagging, execution time was delayed, and numerous other “slow” problems.

I felt that my biggest problem this morning was the fact that it was taking up to 5 minutes just to startup my computer. To remedy this problem my favorite little tool is the Startup tab via the System Configuration Utility window. First of all, you might be wondering whether this Utility Tool is still available in the new Windows Vista. For a quick and easy answer; yes! You can use this same method for both XP and/or Vista Operating Systems.

First find your “Run” program. This is where you will call upon the utility program. On a Windows XP system this can usually be found via Start –> Run. On a Windows Vista system look for Start –> Accessories –> Run.

Once you have successfully opened your “Run” program, type the command “msconfig.exe” into the command line. (type without the quotations)

This will bring up the magical System Configuration Utility program. Now at this time I must warn you that if you do not know what you are doing here; don’t touch anything. This tool controls your BOOT.INI file, your startup programs, your WIN.INI file, and a couple more technically touchy tabs. I repeat; don’t mess with anything unless you know exactly what you are doing. If your ruin things here, you cause troubles with your computer. End of story. Now for the lighter news…

If you select the Startup tab you will be presented with a list of programs with check boxes next to them. If the program box is checked it means that that program loads automatically each time you start your computer. If it isn’t checked then it does not load at startup. The reason for minimizing the amount of programs that load at startup is to speed up your computer when you turn it on, and to relieve some of your computer’s resources. Each program that loads at startup drains a bit of your computer’s processing resources; ultimately slowing down your computer.

Now the good news is that with today’s many resources on the web you can type each Startup Item name into almost any search engine and come up with many websites dedicated to explaining whether or not that program is crucial to startup, or if you can deselect that program.

For example, I deselected the following: ctfmon, MsnMsgr, QTTask, SOUNDMAN, BixFix, Microsoft Office, wcmdmgrl, and a couple more programs. But remember that I researched each startup item to be sure that it wasn’t crucial to my system’s startup.

After minimizing the amount of programs that ran on startup, I increased my boot time from 5 minutes down to 2 minute. That’s something that definitely makes me happy. :-)

Hopefully this little technology blurb has opened your eyes to the value of system maintenance and that you really do have control over speeding up your computer; not all is lost when your computer is slowing down. It just means it needs a little bit of TLC!