It seems to take longer and longer for my CPU to boot up. I have all these "processess" going on at start up with a bunch of mostly .exe (executable) files that I don't have a clue if they are essential or not, and they are all hogging RAM that I want to get back, if possible. What's a good program to purchase or download that tells me what these .exe files are OR will give me a good cleaning of "junk" files I don't need anymore? Thanks in advance, Kent
Sounds like you could have some spyware/malware issues. The programs I typically run to remove issues are: Ad-Aware http://www.lavasoft.com/ Spybot S & D http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html Do an online scan with Ewido http://www.ewido.net/en/ CCleaner (read the directions as it will clean entries from your registry) http://www.ccleaner.com/ If you run through those programs and it is still responding slowly, then you likely have some bloated "actual" programs running in the background (the ones you normally see loaded in the system tray in the bottom right hand corner of the screen) and you would need to address those individually until you found the culprit. This can be done by running the program MSCONFIG and turning "off" items that are showing in your startup routine. P.S. You can also Google those .exe files you are seeing running as a process and normally can determine their origin.
You may also want to run msconfig to see what actually is starting up. You may have a bunch of things no longer used. Another thing to consider is if you have multiple users on this machine setting up different users then work with the policies to prevent mayhem.
Start with the items in your "System Tray". More than 5 or 6 icons in there???Right click on them and find the "Setup" or "Options" or "Advanced Options" and turn off the "On at boot" or "Add to Sys tray" options. Of course your not going to turn off the firewall or virus software. But any program running in the sys tray that you don't use on a regular basis needs to be off. Try a "disk cleanup" also. It does improve the seek time on your hard drive. Doesn't hurt to do a "defrag" also. Both are under "Accessories" in your programs menu. Look in "System Tools". After doing that, see what you get, and then start loading software to combat the slow down. Adding more software right up front only adds to the resource problem. You wash your car before you wax it ... right???? If you want the "easy" version to startup elimination use Spybot. It has multiple tools people never use. To get the tools open spybot, click on "Mode" in the top menu. Click on "Advanced" & "Yes". You will now have a list of items in the lower left corner. Under "Tools" there is one called "System Startup". It will list all items that boot and a check box to turn them on or off. Check out the other tools also. My favorite is the system internals. It cans all the nasty and useless registry entries without going too too deep.
Thanks folks for all the great suggestions... ...I knew I could count on you. I've been out of town all day and just getting back in. Kent
I am also starting to have this problem. I have no clue what the programs are in the msconfig list so how do I know what I need to delete? The last time I tried to "fix" something, I ended up without the Office programs...they were there but could not be accessed until I reloaded the entire program. None of my documents disappeared; I just could not open them. I use norton anti-virus and ad-aware to protect the computer. While I was typing this I received an alert that a high-risk intrusion attempt had been blocked.
1st and foremost you can delete anything in there. You will have to uncheck the items. A good rule to go by is if it does not have a path or filename and is just an empty space uncheck it.
