How to make Microsoft Windows boot faster

[techguy]

techguy's tech tip:

OS: Windows 2000\XP\Vista

Are you tired of Windows taking several minutes to load? Part of the problem may be hardware related, but another likely reason is the number of applications that are set to run on startup. Many software providers (Apple, HP, Kodak, and others) think you need their tools running all the time. They have part of their application load into memory so that if you really do want to use the software it loads instantly. This may be good for some programs, but as an example I rarely use iTunes and don’t need it continually wasting memory and slowing down my PC.

How to fix this issue:


Click the Start Button
Click Run
Type “msconfig” (without the quotes)
Click on the “Startup” tab
Uncheck any unwanted programs - Note: If your not sure what something is, leave it checked)
Click OK
Chose to restart Now or Later
If after the restart something is not working, recheck the box in msconfig. Your computer should now be a bit faster! One last note, some applications are sneaky. They will automatically reset themselves if you install an update patch.

Let me know if you liked this tech tip. I will post another tip soon. :headbang:

[THERESA]

You rock!!! You're my hero. ;)

[popowich]

Wow, I already learned something new with the "msconfig", didn't know that existed. Unfortunately most of what's listed is greek to me. I left them all checked. For the more technical than me, I included a screen shot showing many of my entries.

-Raymond

[techguy]

popowich, You can uncheck the Adobe Reader box to start!

[popowich]

Thanks for the tip! Done! :)

-Raymond

[RocCityDad]

I do this every month or so to make sure no new programs are running.

But just like popowich said, some are greek to me also.

I have seen this tip else where and no one every tells what should run, and what doesn't have to run.

[popowich]

Since I had to do this over the weekend due to numerous complaints about one of my computers being slow, here are some of the things I did to make the computer faster again:

- Use add/remove programs to uninstall problems that are no longer used or simply not needed.

- Use the msconfig to stop things from loading that are not used often. (thanks again!)

- Defragment the hard drive (it was a disaster)

- After defragging, use the system control panel to delete, reboot, and recreate the virtual memory settings so it was a nice block near the beginning of the disk.

- New one for me, but also used the system control panel to tell Windows XP to be geared for performance, not toward the flashy features.

- Run the SpyBot S&D and Spyware Blaster programs and

- Double check McAfee to make sure it's running with the right settings and up to date.

- Disk Cleanup - It's still running and compressing over 6GB of old files. (Maybe I read the display wrong)

That's all the big stuff that I can think of right now.

My next question is that this hard drive is fine, and is actually much newer than most of the computer that it's in. Can a Windows XP hard drive be easily transplanted into a newer system (faster CPU, more memory, different mainboard though, etc) and be OK with the change in hardware? Will it explode like Windows 2000? Only minor troubles that are easily correctable?

-Raymond

[techguy]

Windows XP is fairly tolerant of being moved from one system to another, but it may not work (boot) if the two systems have very different motherboards. As long as Windows boots, you can always work your way through Device Manger fixing driver issues for video, audio, and peripherals. One important tip, be sure to download the NIC drivers for the new system first.

Hard drives are not very expensive. I recommend having two drives in your PC. One drive should be used for the OS and applications and the second drive for media and documents. If you need to rebuild your system, you do not need to worry about the second drive.

[THERESA]

4 days since we have had a tech tip. Stop slacking in the arcade (http://www.discussny.com/arcade.php?) and start posting some useful tips. Perhaps we can lock him out of the arcade. ;)

:D

[popowich]

But then he can beat Harry's scores!

I think Dr. Tom can multi task a do a little gaming between his Tech Tips! :D

-Raymond

[THERESA]

But then he can beat Harry's scores!

I think Dr. Tom can multi task a do a little gaming between his Tech Tips! :D

-Raymond

Apparently not..... Fire that slacker!!! :D