Slim down your autoloaders for faster boots

Topic

New Reply

	INSIDER TRICKS Slim down your autoloaders for faster boots
	By Lincoln Spector When a PC boots, Windows isn’t the only thing that loads. Lots of small apps (and some not so small) load, too. All that activity at startup lengthens boot times, often slows overall system performance, and occasionally causes software conflicts.

---

The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/insider-tricks/slim-down-your-autoloaders-for-faster-boots/ (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

[/tr][/tbl]

Reply | Quote

Replies

Around the turn of the century when I was gifted with a friend’s surplus Toshiba laptop with Windows 95 I set about making it run faster, leaner, meaner. Apart from the wonders of 95 itself, I ended up tweaking myself into more reinstalls than I care to count.

The process continued with 98, 98SE, XP, Vista, and 7. I found some things that work, a few that are eminently reliable and safe to use, and ended up with a short list of things I’ll not go without.

When I moved to XP, and in the midst of my explorations of what a simple-minded home user might do to tweak the OS a bit, I started using TuneUp Utilities. If anyone wants an easy-to-use reliable suite, this is it, and worth every penny.

Along the way I found and used Crap Cleaner (now CCleaner), eruNT, unlocker, Autoruns. Anything from Mark Russinovich is worth its weight in gold. A related set of scripts for dealing with services, all well-explained, comes from http://www.blackviper.com/ – if you want to know about your OS’s services, at least read this.

These days, whether setting up a friend’s new 7 or 8 machine, using on my XP vm, or keeping on hand for the possible awakening of the recovery partition for 7 on my laptop, I use these:

eruNT – this backs up _all_ hives. Indispensible when backed into a corner and don’t want to do a re-install.
unlocker – there’s no such thing as “You don’t have permission….”
CCleaner – simple useful daily magic.
Autoruns – the encyclopedia for your machine.
DriveImage XML – simple, _reliable_ image backup.

I’ve added two things since:
Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector – not only warns about but now updates most applications and plugins. This helps deal with one of my main hassles with any Windows system – the piecemeal process of updating every little thing separately – and one of the gross annoyances that led me to Linux.

Soluto. I started using this in beta when it was offered as a way to monitor and then improve boot times by delaying or de-activating auto-run services and programs. Now it’s a full-service suite of client and web-based services, and something I’ve recommended and routinely install on new machines if the customer agrees. [full disclosure: For reasons not fully clear, they sent me a T-shirt a few months ago. It’s a nice one. But I recommended Soluto long before the T.]

There are a few other things I normally run, mostly security stuff, but that’s outside the ambit of this thread.

Turning off auto-run in the app is better, I think – unless your utility “talks to” that setting itself.

Reply | Quote

There’s a very helpful free utility that makes it easy for you to control your start up programs – and even delay when they start. It’s WinPatrol Free Edition (aka “Scotty”) available from http://www.winpatrol.com. Use the “Startup Programs” tab to disable or remove startup programs. Right click on a startup program and select “Move to Delayed Startup Program List” to set a time delay before the program starts. Under the “Delayed Start” tab, select a program and then click on the “delay Options” button to set a period of time before the program loads. This is very handy and simple — and enables you to take programs that don’t have to load right away out of the initial loading period, leading to quicker booting. WinPatrol also alerts you to when there’s a change in start up programs and let’s you decide whether to allow the change.

Reply | Quote

That’s X2 for WinPatrol

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

Reply | Quote

So how to enable an autoload if not listed in msconfig?

Reply | Quote