|
To promote their new product, Windows 95, Microsoft purchased the rights to the
venerable Rolling Stones hit "Start Me Up" Microsoft intended to draw
attention to their latest feature, the Start button. The choice has proven to
be quite ironic.
|
|
Windows allows applications to start themselves up when you turn on your
computer, whether you need them or not. Each one takes a bit of time to start
up. The more applications that do this trick, the longer you have to wait. To
paraphrase Mick Jagger, "you can start me up" but it seems to take forever.
|
|
The idle applications continue to run in the background, which wastes system
resources. Most of the applications are little or never used. Some launch
themselves for the sole purpose of sending information about your computer back
to their publishers.
|
|
You can see which applications are running on your computer at any moment by
holding down the CTRL, and ALT keys and tapping the Delete key, We nerds call
this "the three-finger salute." Do not push the Delete key more than once, or
your computer will restart, not a disaster, just a waste of time. The Close
Program window will open with a list of applications inside it.
|
|
You can close individual applications by selecting them from the list and
clicking the
E
nd Task button. You'll be surprised at how few of them are doing anything
useful. You will also be surprised at how much faster your computer runs
without them. A quick warning, some of the applications are needed to launch
peripherals like scanners and printers and some are used by Windows itself.
Don't worry, restarting your computer automatically restores any programs that
you closed.
|
|
Which is the essence of the problem. How can you prevent all the unwanted
programs from starting themselves up every time you turn on your computer?
Windows 98 users can run a utility called "msconfig" to select which programs
are allowed to start themselves. Windows 95, 2000, and XP users must download
and install the correct version of this utility before they can run it.
|
|
To run msconfig; click the Start button, click Run, type in msconfig, and click
Okay. The System Configuration Utility window will open. Select the Startup
tab, which is the tab at the far right. You will see a list of every
application that starts itself up when you turn on your computer. You can pick
which applications run at start up by checking or clearing the box next to
their names. The applications remain on the list after their check boxes are
cleared, so you can restore their status if you accidentally clear a check box
you wanted to keep. When it doubt, leave it in.
|
|
Once you know how to "start it up" the right way, you'll get a lot more
satisfaction from your computer.
|
