The OneMinute Geek

The Good and the Not Good

The Problem:

Booting computers can often take longer than waking a hibernating grizzly. All kinds of things seem to moan and groan and stumble to life while we sit there waiting for the PC to turn on. Some of us even have strange messages pop up, like a notice that a bad driver has been detected and wouldn’t load. We then click through those silly and annoying message boxes, not once giving them much thought.

But, it’s not normal for a computer to hiccup when booting. Nor is it OK for unneeded software to silently launch when turning on your computer. When these things happen, it can be signs of more serious problems.

The Solution:

A hint that you might have this problem is having lots of tiny icons in the notification area on your desktop, which is located on the lower right of your Windows screen, next to the clock. (To get a more comprehensive list, hold down these three keys on your keyboard at the same time: Ctl-Alt-Del. Just FYI, Explorer and Systray are required to run Windows.)

You should track down those programs that don’t load properly when booting and also delete those annoying auto-starting programs that are unneeded and unnecessarily hogging your system’s resources, i.e. horsepower.

To see what’s auto-starting on your PC, download and run a free utility called AutoRun: http://www.sysinternals.com/files/autoruns.zip. If you don’t recognize a program, click on it, then click View and then Properties.

Now, not all auto-starting programs are evil. Your registry has a bunch of important ones, as do your Startup folders and scheduled tasks. If you’re on a network at the office, for example, there may be a some group policy scripts there, too. So don’t go crazy deleting things.

To cross-reference auto-starting programs and their associated programs, go to www2.whidbey.com/djdenham/Uncheck.htm.

If you find something that doesn’t seem right, go to www.Google.com, enter the name of the program and look it up.

To get rid of an auto-starting program, go to the program itself and see if you can disable auto-startup in the preferences section. You can, for example, disable chats like Yahoo and AOL from starting when booting.

If that doesn’t work, go to Start, Settings, Control Panel and then Add/Remove Programs. Remove the suspect program, restart your PC and use Autorun to see if it were truly removed.

If that doesn’t work, you may want to consider using a third-party auto disabler. Try Mike Lin’s Startup Control Panel: www.mlin.net

James Kerr is President/CEO of SuperGeeks, a Hawaii-based computer service and repair company (www.supergeeks.net). Please feel free to send your questions, comments and suggestions to Mr. Kerr. He can be reached at kerr@supergeeks.net and 942-0773 .