I hate startups, programs not businesses

I must be getting old and cranky because when I don’t like something, I really have no use for it. The current object of my disgust are those little programs that it seems every software writer thinks they must install in order to make their little piece of your software pie work better.  These timegrabbers tend to run at system startup especially on Windows.

These suckers make your system startup all so slowly and then continue to sit there and use memory and the occasional CPU cycle while you’re trying to work.  The longer you’ve had your PC, the more of this digital pocket lint you will have picked up.

Autoruns seems to be the uber-master for finding and allowing you to stop these time thieves from loading.  The program finds the autoruns from everywhere they can hide.  When you start Autoruns, look at the Logon tabs for autorun programs that have been installed by applications you don’t even use any more.  They’ll probably be plenty of them.  You’ll likely be amazed by how much your computer needs to do before it gets ready for you.  When you see and entry that you want to keep from starting up, uncheck the entry and it won’t be run the next time your system starts up.

A good option to choose within Autoruns is Hide Microsoft and Windows Entries, since what you’re looking for is 3rd-party dreckware.  Cleaning up Windows itself is above the pay-grade of mortals.

By judiciously using Autoruns and unchecking entries that I didn’t need, I saved over 3 minutes of startup time for my PC.  That would have been 3 minutes of frustrated cursing every time I had to restart my computer.

Download Autoruns, unzip it and run it without needing to install which means it won’t try and install an autorun.