I would like to fine tune my PC’s running XP and Vista. I selected configure for performance under System in the Control Panel but it’s not enough. Under RUN and MSCONFIG there are dozens of operations running and I’m not sure I need all of them. Can anyone tell me what I need and what I can deselect under MSCONFIG? My PC’s are connected to cable internet via the RG45 ethernet wire to a router to a cable moden and a USB ink jet all-in-one printer. All I do with my PC’s are internet browsing, shopping, ripping and burning CD’s, taxes and budget balancing, and a few simple games mostly from the 80′s and simple games from Yahoo and an occasional live chat. One PC is a Toshiba lap top with Intel Duo-core and 2GB RAM and Vista Home Premium, the other is a HP desk top with 4GB RAM and Intel Pentium D (which runs slower than the lap top), originally XP Media center upgraded to Vista Home Premium.
Printer Media, Computers & Internet
May 13th, 2011 on 4:37 am
see as how the deskyop runs slower. i would say you could possibly have spyware or viruses. there are 3 free programs you need for this. you can also run disk cleanup and then run defragmenter.
www. download.com
avg free antivirus
adaware
spybot search and destroy
install, update, scan, and clean.
May 13th, 2011 on 4:37 am
I like Startup Adviser. It is a free download, and gives lots more info about what programs start on boot up. I personally have absolutely nothing start on boot except my anti-virus. Everything you need to do will still work, but it doesn’t need to be running in the background eating up cpu cycles.
May 13th, 2011 on 4:37 am
In spite of what some zealots say, I’m hesitant to suggest manually pulling anything from the startup list in MSCONFIG just to improve performance. It’s too easy to pull something critical to startup and find yourself locked out of repairing the situation. Instead, try turning off unnecessary startups with their own options.
Music and video players always seem to think they’re indispensable and put themselves into the startup list. If you have any players, see if they have an option for turning this off.
Some programs that auto-update over the Web also work this way, although for security reasons I wouldn’t suggest turning off updates altogether. Adobe Reader, for instance, often releases security updates. On my machine, its update seems to run only when I’m actually running Adobe, so I think I have the automatic function turned off.
Netscape used to have (and may still have) a portion that stays resident in order to reduce its startup time. When I ran Netscape, I turned that off as well.
Hope that helps somewhat.