msconfig/startup

Can anyone tell me when you go into the startup in msconfig what needs to be on there

 

Depends on what you want to start at boot. I have only three items that start at boot, Comodo firewall, NOD32, and registry backup (Erunt). After my system has booted, I have created a couple of batch files I run to start other programs.

 

Very few things need to be there. You can probably disable everything except for your antivirus and firewall. Everything else is usually there to be 'helpful'. But who really needs their printer software running in the background all the time?

 

Edit: well I was too slow to post, and two people beat me to it.

You would have to provide a list of startup items to tell for sure, as what's in the startup is going to be different on almost every computer.

And unless I'm mistaken, it's better to use a utility other than MSconfig to control the startup. msconfig is really meant to be more of a diagnostic tool than a long term solution to startup control.

In my honest opinion WinPatrol seems to be a good solution. It has quite a few handy utilities other than startup control as well. It even has the option of delaying startup items and a few little neat things like that.

Note that WinPatrol does have other security type features so it will probably pop up and ask security related questions from time to time regarding IE add-ons or active x controls and the like. I'm sure you could probably disable those, or just don't have WinPatrol load on startup to prevent those if you didn't want them. To do this you simply uncheck the "Automatically run WinPatrol when computer starts" box under the options tab.

At any rate, if you decide to try WinPatrol here is a link to it http://www.majorgeeks.com/WinPatrol_d3380.html

You can generate a HJT type log directly in WinPatrol by going to the Options tab and clicking on the Hijack Log button. Included in this log will be most startup items, of which a qualified person here on the forums would be able to tell you if they are necessary or not.

Hope this helps.