Is your PC slow - 1 Modify startup programs

My Home Desktop with a XP pro behaves inconsistently. On some days the PC is fast. When I click on files and folders, they open up instantaneously. On other days the PC is slow. It puzzles me. This happens even when I haven’t made any changes in my settings or added any new software. When its slow – it can be frustrating. When I click on My Computer, it takes a long time to open and I have to watch an icon which swings back and forth like a upside down pendulum. When I click on menu options, the menu highlight bar hangs for a while and then races down to whatever I’m trying to select. Files and folders take a long time to open and sometimes I’m left wondering whether the PC is hanging.

Its irritating.

So I decided to check out the multitude of tweaks available to speed up my PC. I tried out a few and my PC is definitely faster.

Here they are :

Disable unnecessary programs during startup

When your PC starts up, several applications, by default, also get activated. Many of them are unnecessary and slow down the boot up process. You can disable unnecessary programs. To do this click on Start – Run. Type msconfig and click ok. You’ll get a screen which says System Configuration Utility.

When you click on the startup and services tabs you’ll see a list of programs similar to the following

To remove unnecessary programs, uncheck them.

How do you know which programs are unnecessary ?

One way to do this is to uncheck programs and restart your PC. If there is a problem and it happens to be an essential program, your PC may not reboot. In that case, start in safe mode,(Tap on the F8 key for most PCs when your PC is starting. You’ll get a screen where you can start the PC in safe mode) and recheck the program.

The following is a lsit of programs that can be safely removed from the Startup and Services menu .

Fast User Switching
Indexing Service (Slows the hard drive down)
Messenger
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Procedure Call Locater
Remote Registry
Routing & Remote Access
Server
SSDP Discovery Service

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Upload Manager
Workstation

For one of the most comprehensive lists of startup programs, classified into essential, non essential, dangerous, user defined etc, check out the following site.

http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php?filter=&letter=