How to Disable Windows Startup Processes

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 in windows by jeremyp

So, you have a million little icons in your system tray, eh? Each one of them most likely represents a process that starts up when you log into Windows. They’re probably slowing you down quite a bit, and you might not even realize it because Windows hides the icons you don’t use by default. Disabling non-essential startup processes is an easy way to make your computer run faster.

“How do you disable them?” you ask? Most people probably know about the “Startup” folder in the Start Menu. However, the registry also has a couple places that can cause processes to start at login. There is a place for just your user login, and there is another place that affects all users. You need administrator privileges to disable things for all users.

Startup Folder

Open a Windows Exploer window and check out the following folders:

  • C:\Documents and Settings\<your_user_name>\Start Menu\Startup
  • C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Startup

The first folder contains shortcuts to programs that are started when you log in, and the second one contains programs that start when any user (including you) logs in. You should be able to safely delete just about anything in either of these folders. This is not usually the way essential processes are started.

Registry

Note: Editing the registry is recommended for advanced users only. If you’ve never edited the registry before, proceed with caution. You could seriously screw up your system if you’re not careful. You have been warned.

Fire up the Registry Editor (Start->Run, type “regedit”) and check out the following keys:

  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Here you should find a bunch of programs that get started at startup. Many of the names will look like jibberish, so you might have to do some research to figure out which ones are safe to disable. I recommend searching at www.processlibrary.com for the .EXE name. They’ll you what is safe to disable and what is not.

After disabling all the non-essential processes, you should notice that your system is much snappier. “A nice improvement for the five minutes it takes to do,” I say.