Biden PC's Small Business IT Blog

If you're like everyone else, you want your computer to be faster. I go through these steps quite often myself, just to keep things clean.

Before we move into the processes below, I want to give the disclaimer that I am giving these instructions for informational purposes. If you follow these and your computer doesn't run correctly afterwards, it is your responsibility.

Startup Programs Slow Your PC Down and Increase Boot Time
Look at the bottom right corner of your computer monitor. You'll see the open taskbar applications. This shows you what programs are running in the background. If there are more than 6, you probably could cut some fat here. I currently have 4. If you see a left-arrow or a < symbol you have even more programs running. A great program to see all the processes that are running, as well as kill them temporarily, is Process Explorer.

So if you download, uncompress and run Process Explorer, you'll see a window that looks like this.

The processes that you can more safely kill (their term, not mine) are (when organized by process) below explorer.exe. You should know recognize most of them because they will correspond to programs on your computer. This program should make no permanent changes to your computer. If you kill something that shouldn't be killed, your computer will most likely freeze or shutdown.

A great program to stop programs and processes from running when you boot up is Autoruns. Both Process Explorer and Autoruns are programs created by Sysinternals which is is owned by Microsoft.

If you download, uncompress and run Autoruns, you'll see a window that looks like this.


Autoruns can make more dangerous changes to your computer. This program edits the registry and essentially removes settings so that programs and processes don't run when you boot up your computer. If you cancel a program from running, it will not run until you start it. This is great for iTunes helper, Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher, and anything else that you commonly run by clicking on it. This DOES NOT include your anti-virus programs. If you disable those, you will be unprotected and I do not recommend that. If your anti-virus program is slowing your computer down, email me and we can talk about it.

General rules for using Autoruns...

1. Don't disable anything that says "Microsoft Corporation" under the "Publisher" heading.
   
2. If it has to do with Norton, Symantec, McAfee, or anything else security related, Don't Disable It.
   
3. If you don't know what it is, Don't Disable It.
   

Ok, this is the first of a series on how to speed up your PC. I'll write more later.
Tim