Unwanted programs at Startup

Happy Holidays to all & may 2010 be a year of memorable moments!

I have a question:

Is there a widely used way to normally manage startup of a computer?

Or...

What is the most harmless or most popular way to manage what starts up at boot up, on the computer?

Is there a program that one could load & do this?

Can an average user do this? Or should one just deal with what starts up when the computer boots?

I used to just go: Start-Run-type in, msconfig- to access the System Configuration Utility

and... then just uncheck whatever I didn't want to start up.

I have since found out that this is not the preferred way. I just came across this website trying to get assistance to fix a Malware infested computer. And while waiting for responses, I have been doing a lot of perusing & reading. Learning a lot, I might add. And hence the reason for this question.

Any ideas? How do you manage startup?

 

g'day damedic_mt

i use ccleaner to manage my startup items as i find it safe as long as you google the process before you remove it.
others may come along and recommend other programs,i personally find ccleaner a good program as it has the cleaner function and registry cleaner and a handy system restore manager and remove programs function all in the one program.
if you don't already have this program you can download it from here " http://www.majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_No_Yahoo_Toolbar_English_d4191.html ".
i hope this helps and all the best for the new year.

 

Hi damedic_mt.

Until you are given the "all clear" in the Malware Removal forum you should not make any changes to your system unless instructed to do so by your Malware Removal Expert. Doing otherwise will only make the removal process longer and more difficult.

In the mean time you might find this thread of interest, in particular post #2.

 

I use either startup cpl or startup manager 2.4.2, both can be found here at MJ. I prefer the 2.4.2.

To know what is necessary for your 'puter, download either of these programs and then boot into safe mode, pressing the F8 key while starting should get you to the menu for safe mode.

Then use your startup manager to see what programs are running, you now know what is the bare minimum for your machine.

Be sure to leave your antivirus running as well as any firewall, though the latter won't show up in the startup menu.

If using startup 2.4.2, you also need to leave userinit.exe and explorer.exe running. If you have microsoft word on your machine you'll also see ctf.mon, don't worry about it, not worth the effort to remove.

But yes, do go through the malware removal steps if you suspect an infection. Can be worth the effort even if you don't. I just cleaned my sister's machine and even though I had it running well, I went through the steps and it found 18 infections anyway. Now it runs even better!

 

Thanks to all of you that have given their $00.02 so far. I appreciate it.

And... I was no where near going to start doing "Stuff" to my infected 'puter, without the instructions of the provided malware removal expert, in this case which is Dr. M. - Am waiting patiently & we're proceeding as time allows, I guess???

I was doing some cleaning of the other 'puter's in the home & was going thru the list - Basic computer maintenance... (which I found on this website). The first which was to get rid of programs I did not use, then I ran the CCleaner, etc.

Now, I wanted to reduce the lag time of startup, so I thought I would get some opinions.

I will check out the programs which were suggested. Thanks again & have a happy & safe new year.

damedic

 

Just pulling your chain, but it's worth a heck more than $.02 :-D