Speed up your startup

[AndyD]

I'm also a whizz with msconfig but I'v always steered clear of any app that goes wild in the registry.

[twinscythe12332]

I'm also a whizz with msconfig but I'v always steered clear of any app that goes wild in the registry.

normally I'd look at those ones suspiciously wondering why it's going wild =P

[IanF]

I am no whiz on microsoft. But what I like is if you look at the start up processes this gives a description of what the programme is and what it is used for. It seems to pickup more on windows 7 than XP so there must be a lot of bloatware on W7.

[twinscythe12332]

what would you consider to be bloatware?

[Dave A]

what would you consider to be bloatware?

Stuff that 99% of us ordinary citizens don't ever use.

[IanF]

Here are some:
Power2go, search indexer, widcomm bluetooth, google helper, wmp network sharing service, windows live essentials, adobe setup there are a lot of others.

[tec0]

In all honesty, MTN is so crappy lately the download just felt “to long” so I stopped it suspecting the download, but in actuality it was MTN that was at fault. When I checked the logs 2mb of data was transferred in about 9 minutes ?????????????????

[twinscythe12332]

Here are some:
Power2go, search indexer, widcomm bluetooth, google helper, wmp network sharing service, windows live essentials, adobe setup there are a lot of others.

yeah, half of those would have been placed with installations. Still annoying that adobe thinks it has to have the updater at startup.

[irneb]

Here are some:
Power2go, search indexer, widcomm bluetooth, google helper, wmp network sharing service, windows live essentials, adobe setup there are a lot of others.

Add to that:
Google Update, Apple Update (because of iTunes), Bonjour Service (also iTunes), Java Update, Java Quicvkstarter Service, LightScribe Service, Some Cell Phone connectors (Nokia's OVI, Motorola's MotoHelper, etc.), WMPNetworkSvc, AtiExtEvent, Nvidia Display Properties Extension, Outlook Express's Setup Utility, Windows Messenger, AdobeLM Service, Ati Hotkey Poller, JavaQuickStarterService, ODServ, WinLiveID.

In short, the most useless ones are those "autoupdating" things from Apple, Adobe, Java, Flash, RealPlayer, etc. Why for the love of Pete do they have to run 24/7 even if you're not connected to the web? Each one of them simply takes up more RAM for something which could possibly be used once a month (if that). If they want to check for updates either have them as scheduled tasks or only check once the program is actually used!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The CellPhone thingy (or modem "watcher") is only usefull once you've actually plugged in the phone, why have it run when the phone's not even close to the PC? Can't they simply start it from the driver as the P&P loads the driver anyway?

And why have those non-used programs always running? E.g. OLExpress Setup? Bonjour network sharing for iTunes as well as Apple's CPU hogging Updater (when I've un-installed iTunes because it slows my PC down to a crawl!!!) Windows Media Player's network sharing as well (I don't even use WMP at all, I use WMPClassic for my video's and SongBird for my music). And Google's bloody updates!!! That's because I once (more than a year ago) installed Chrome and still there's traces of it left (that one's like a virus - you cannot get rid of it). Java just acts silly, the so called "Quick Starter" takes up a whole 150MB, but you still wait for Java to start when there's an Applet on a web page ... WTF??? And don't get me started on Adobe! If you have anything more than just Acrobat Reader - you have at least one updater for each of the programs (if you've got PhotoShop there are several). And the Ati/Nvidia stuff? Why both? I had a Nvidia Quadro card before, but it burnt out, now I've got a Ati Radeon - and I've "so called un-installed" the Nvidia driver ... but it still loads!

I'm fully in agreement! There are huge quantities of BLOATware all over the show. To the point where I see most of them as MALWARE! The only way I can even try to get rid of these buggers is to go through Registry (or use something like these registry management softwares). Their own "un"-installers don't do it! Especially not Google's!

And one thing which just keeps on popping up its ugly head? Windows Messenger? I can't tell you how many times I went through the procedure to get rid of it ... only for it to reappear once Windows has done one of its numerous updates! I don't bloody use it, I use Miranda instead since it can link to hundreds of other chat servers / Lan chats making for a one-stop-software for all connections - unlike M$'s useless thing.

[AndyD]

The easiest way to stop all these services is to install a start-up manager before you install any programs on your computer. Every time a program tries to add something that will run in the background it jumps in with a warning screen and asks if you want to allow it. It's easier to do this than to have to clean up the mess later.