PC Tips Tweaks and Maintenance

Windows will start various programs upon startup; this is both a good and bad feature. The good: this allows Windows to load programs like your antivirus, firewall, etc that are necessary to your security. The bad: often programs are added to the startup process without your knowledge or consent and most of these are not necessary and many are irritating or even malware. Having many programs running on startup results in a very slow startup and once loaded they hog resources slowing your PC down.

In order to resolve this, you need to optimize your startup process by removing unnecessary and unwanted programs from your startup and protect your startup processes by locking them against unknown changes. Control your Windows startup processes and you can decrease the length of time your PC takes to load and increase the resources available to the programs you are using and even stop some malware.

With the right tools, even a user without much computer knowledge, can easily control the Windows startup processes. A good startup management program like Startup Inspector enables you to control your startup processes. With a simple click of the consult button Startup Inspector provides you with information as to what the items are and if they are required or not and gives you simple enabling/disabling of these programs. If Startup Inspector does not know the particular items in your startup processes it has an easy link to look up the item on Google.

There are many stand alone tools that will help you to control what is allowed to modify your startup processes and lots of security tools have this feature built in. Two of the security tools I recommend have features that lock the registry and startup processes against any unauthorized changes. Spybot Search and Destroy has its “Tea Timer” which works great as a tool, but its popup is sometimes awkward to deal with. Comodo Free Firewall has its “Defense +” feature which does a great job and is easier to work with. It will first check any changes against its ever growing database and then ask; supplying the information it does know. Once it “learns” enough for your setup the questions occur less often. It also has many other great security features but this is about your startup processes so I will not get into the firewall features here.

Controlling your startup processes, removing unnecessary and unwanted programs will reduce the loading time of Windows. Knowing what is trying to modify your startup processes and only allowing necessary items to load will keep your PC more secure and faster. Even on a slow PC, you will find your computer is performing better when you properly manage Windows startup.

More detailed information is available in the “PC Tips Tweaks and Maintenance Pro Edition”.