As you may know, the system requirements for Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate all list 1GB of RAM as a minimum. However, we all know that Vista runs better with 2GB of RAM or more. If you’re currently running Vista on a system with only 1GB of RAM you know that the system can, at times, be frustratingly slow — especially when you are running extremely memory-intensive applications.
Of course the ultimate solution would be to add another 1GB of RAM to your system, but what if doing so is not feasible at this point in time? Are you stuck with a sluggish system? Fortunately, you can bump up Vista performance by trimming back startup programs that may not be needed. By preventing unnecessary programs from automatically starting, you’ll have more memory to spare for the programs that you do want to run.
In this edition of the Windows Vista Report, I show you several methods that you can use to investigate the programs that automatically start up on your system. I show you how you can eliminate or at least temporarily prevent them from automatically starting up.
Using WMIC
You can investigate startup programs using a specially configured WMIC (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line) command. WMIC is built into the Windows operating system and allows you to tap into a wide variety of application systems, hardware components, and operating system subsystems.
Using WMIC command, you can easily create a very nice HTML-based report of those programs that automatically start up on your system. You can then print the report to have on hand as you investigate whether you can safely eliminate any of those programs.
To create the report, open a Command Prompt window and type the following command:
wmic startup get /format:hform > startupreport.htm
When you do, the report will be created in a matter of moments. To access the file, just type the following:
startupreport.htm
You’ll then see a report displayed in Internet Explorer similar to the one shown in Figure A.
Figure A
Using a specially configured WMIC command, you can create a nicely formatted report on startup programs.
As you can see, the report is set up in a table and uses color to make it very easy to read.
Using Reliability and Performance Monitor
You can also investigate startup programs using the Reliability and Performance Monitor. Open the Control Panel, click the System and Maintenance category, and then click the Performance Information and Tools subcategory. Then under the Tasks panel, select the Advanced Tools and click the Generate a System Health Report icon. When you do, you’ll encounter a UAC and will need to respond accordingly.
When the Reliability and Performance Monitor window opens, the utility will begin compiling its report, which will take about 2-3 minutes. Once the report is compiled, expand the Software Configuration section and scroll down to the Startup Programs section, as shown in Figure B.
Figure B
The Reliability and Performance Monitor creates a much more concise report on the Startup Programs.
Using System Configuration
You can investigate and disable startup programs using System Configuration. Open the Control Panel, click the System and Maintenance category, click the Administrative Tools subcategory, and then click the System Configuration icon. When you do, you’ll encounter a UAC and will need to respond accordingly.
When the System Configuration dialog box appears, select the Startup tab, as shown in Figure C. As you can see, the Startup tab provides a straightforward listing of the programs that automatically start up on your system.
Figure C
You can view and easily disable startup programs on the Startup tab of the System Configuration utility.
You can disable a startup program by clearing the adjacent text box. As you can see, the Startup tab makes it easy to keep track of those programs that you have disabled by recording the date and time they were disabled. When you click OK, you’ll be prompted to restart the system to activate your changes.
Using Software Explorer
You can also investigate and disable startup programs using Windows Defender's Software Explorer. Click the Start button, type Defender in the Start Search box and press [Enter]. When you see the Windows Defender Home page, click the Tools link on the menu. Once you see the Tools and Settings page you’ll find the Software Explorer link in the second column under the Tools heading. Once you click that link, you’ll see the Software Explorer, as shown in Figure D.
Figure D
Software Explorer combines detailed descriptions of each startup program with the ability to disable those programs you deem unnecessary.
As you can see, the Startup Programs category contains a list of programs and provides a detailed description of the currently selected program. To disable any program, you first click on the Show For All Users button and deal appropriately with the UAC that pops up. Once you do, you’ll see that the Remove and Disable buttons are activated. You can then click the Disable button, which will display a confirmation dialog box. To remove a program from memory and reclaim the RAM, you’ll need to restart your system.
When the system restarts, you’ll receive a pop-up message in the notification area that tells you that Vista is currently blocking some startup programs. This warning will display only momentarily, but serves as a reminder that you have disabled some startup programs each time the system is restarted.
Display legal notice on startup: Wanna tell your friends about the do's and dont's in your computer when they login in your absence. Well you can do it pretty easily by displaying a legal notice at system start up.
REGEDIT
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system]
"legalnoticecaption"="enter your notice caption"
"legalnoticetext"="enter your legal notice text"
Automatic Administrator Login: Well here's the trick which you can use to prove that Windows XP is not at all secure as multi-user operating system. Hacking the system registry from any account having access to system registry puts you in to the administrator account.
REGEDIT 4
No Shutdown: Wanna play with your friends by removing the shutdown option from start menu in their computer.
Just hack it down !!!
Regedit
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
"NoClose"="DWORD:1"
Menu Delays:
Another minor and easy tweak to remove any delay from menus sliding out. For this you will need to use regedit (open regedit by going to Start -> Run..., then typing 'regedit' and pressing enter). The key you need to change is located in HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop. The actual key is called MenuShowDelay - all you have to do is change the value to 0. Remember, you will have to re-boot your computer for this tweak to take effect.
GPEDIT.MSC And Autoplay
A great tweaking file that comes with XP is gpedit.msc. Go to Start -> Run... and then type in 'gpedit.msc' and press enter. This is effectively the Policies Editor, and it comes in handy often. For example, if you hate CD autoplay like I do and want to permanently disable it, you can use this tool to do so. Just run gpedit.msc, then go to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System. In here you can see the value 'Turn Off Autoplay'. Right-click on it and then click 'Properties'.
Increasing options in add/remove programs:
Not a fan of MSN Messenger? don't want Windows Media Player on your system? Fair enough, but if you go to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, by default none of Windows XP's 'built in' programs are visible. it's fairly easy to change, though... just open the file X:\Windows\inf\sysoc.inf (where X: is the drive letter where Windows XP is installed) in Notepad. You should see a section of the file something like this:
This is a list of all components installed at the moment. I've taken the example of MSN Messenger - the program entry called 'msmsgs', third-last line. You can see the word 'hide' highlighted - this is the string which tells Windows not to display the component in the Add/Remove Programs list. Fix this up by simply deleting the word 'hide' like so:
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
To this:
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7
Now, after restarting, you should be able to see MSN Messenger in the Add/Remove Programs list. If you want to be able to quickly view and remove all components, simply open the sysoc.inf file and do a global find and replace for the word ",hide" and replace it with a single comma ",".
Automatically Kill Programs At Shutdown:
don't you hate it when, while trying to shut down, you get message boxes telling you that a program is still running? Making it so that Windows automatically kills applications running is a snap. Simply navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop directory in the Registry, then alter the key AutoEndTasks to the value 1.
Speeding Up Share Viewing:
This is a great tweak. Before I found it, I was always smashing my head against the table waiting to view shares on other computers. Basically, when you connect to another computer with Windows XP, it checks for any Scheduled tasks on that computer - a fairly useless task, but one that can add up to 30 seconds of waiting on the other end - not good! Fortunately, it's fairly easy to disable this process. First, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace in the Registry. Below that, there should be a key called {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. Just delete this, and after a restart, Windows will no longer check for scheduled tasks - mucho performance improvement!
If you don't want MSN Messenger to start at startup simply logon to your account and
go to tools --> options to disable it. If you don't have an account, as it won't let you change the options without first logging on to an account. Click on the Start-->Run and type in regedit, then go to, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Run Delete the key that says, MSMSGS - REG_SZ - "C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe" /background
As you may know, the system requirements for Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate all list 1GB of RAM as a minimum. However, we all know that Vista runs better with 2GB of RAM or more. If you’re currently running Vista on a system with only 1GB of RAM you know that the system can, at times, be frustratingly slow — especially when you are running extremely memory-intensive applications.
