Vent about startup.

Dave_C_2

Why do programs insist on installing themselves so that they "quick start" by starting up when the computer is booted. My vent is that they do this by default and there is usually an option to untick hidden in the options or settings menu.

The net result is that if all the programs that want to quick start were allowed to do so the PC would take 10 minutes to boot and the memory would all be used up. The default should be the other way round.

The latest one to catch me out was Steam, easily disabled on startup, but there again I knew what to watch out for! If I want steam to run I will click on the game or icon, I don't want it running when I'm using Office and vice versa.

Pity the PC newbie whose PC is plagued by a mass of these programs such as Office quick start, Skype and so on.

Even worse are the insidious ones like nerobackitup that do nothing useful, and despite removing from msconfig only re-install themselves. I use ccleaner to stop these.

Vent over, Dave

S0litaire

The one's i HATE are the "auto-update" services (which are usually hidden and you have to manually turn them off in the MSConfig services options!!) That stops you for a good 10-30 seconds while they wait for the network to come up and do their checks!

I don't mind a program prompting me to check for an update when i open the program Just not when I start the bl000dy machine! >_<

ok
Rant over! off to do some shopping. ^_^

Lifeforms

msconfig was discovered for me several years ago in Win XP and has been a companion ever since! It frustrated the hell out of me to remove programs out of the "start up" menu subsection on XP and find they still ran silently.

Just a word about msconfig, in case someone tries to fidde with it without knowledge of what it can do, be very aware of just what you disable through here. Some of the programs are not what they appear to be, obviously if it says nero component, then you can be fairly sure it's to do with nero, but you can have things named that you just don't recognise, and disabling those may affect the running of the computer. If in doubt... Google the exe file. ie msconfig.exe in google shows this and for the love of god, don't download any exe files linked in google. Common sense and all that!

somersethillbilly

A pretty definitive list of start up programs is here http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php