Top Ten 2007: #6: Get Control of Startup Items
One of the major causes of slowdowns with desktops is the number of applications or applets that start up automatically when you boot your machine. Often unbeknownst to you, as you install new applications on your computer, they often set up pieces of code to automatically start. A lot of these you don’t need and don’t want to have taking up memory on your system.
Here are a few examples:
- Quicken and Quickbooks – Both automatically setup the Billminder to automatically start when your computer starts. You might not even use Billminder, but it’s there, consuming memory. Also, Quickbooks, and I believe Quicken too, installs a run time program to automatically check for updates. Shut it off! They’ll remind you periodically anyway that you “haven’t checked for updates in a while…” and you can do so manually.
- Adobe Reader – We’re not big fans of Adobe Reader to begin with. It is HUGE compared to other PDF readers out there. But if you insist on using it, just know that a piece of Adobe Reader starts up every time you start your machine. Why? Because, when you DO go to open up Adobe, they want it to open FAST. So they pre-load some code, and it’s eating memory, all the time.
- Same story for some versions of Microsoft Office. There’s a component that automatically starts up with your computer, to make all their apps open faster when you call on them. We turn this off.
So, how do you control just what’s going on with your computer at startup time? Well, you’re reading the right blog…
StartupCPL
This was written by an MIT grad named Mike Lin, and has been around for years. Go to:
You’ll find an introduction, a ‘tip jar’ (please donate if you can), and then down below, two choices of downloads: A control panel and a standalone executable. The standalone executable is a ‘run it once, use it, and it goes away’ application; the Control Panel actually creates a new Control Panel in Windows Control Panel. You can use either, but we install the Control Panel.
Simply save the file, then unzip it and run it. It installs with one click.
If you’ve installed the Control Panel version, if you go to Start > Settings > Control Panel, you find a new control panel icon that looks like this:
Double-click the icon, and you’ll see this interface:
Click each tab to see what’s starting up at start up time. Uncheck the items you don’t want. Then re-start your machine. If you notice anything not working the way you need it to, go back to the Control Panel and review what you unchecked. You need to be a bit conservative here.
Always looking for speed…
Randy Garland