Over time as you install more and more software you may start to notice that it takes longer and longer for your computer to startup.  More likely than not, this is probably because many applications these days hook into your Windows Startup process and automatically load up each time you start your computer.   For some applications, that’s a good thing (Anti-Virus, Firewall, etc…) and I’m OK with it, however for the majority of apps out there it’s just a resource SUCK which are doing nothing more than taking up memory, cpu and extending my startup times.

As always, we have a solution for our readers out there!  By using the Microsoft Configuration tool (msconfig.exe) we can quickly and easily audit what’s running at startup and disable the things we would prefer to just start manually after boot.


How To Disable Startup Applications In Windows

Step 1

Click the Start Menu  then in the search box Type msconfig and Press Enter or Click the msconfig.exe program link.



launch msconfig.exe from the start menu in windows 7

Step 2

From within the System Configuration tool, Click Startup tab and then Uncheck the program boxes that you would like to prevent from starting when Windows starts.  Click OK to save changes when you are done.

manually select  which programs you would like to disable from auto-start

Step 3

Now that you’ve saved changes Restart Windows and the selected programs should no longer automatically start up.