The Computer Corner
More on start-up upstarts
By Charles Miller November 14, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Following up on last week’s column, another Atención reader wants to know what all those programs are that run at startup.

Last week, I had recommended users click on Start/Run MSConfig [Enter] to bring up the “System Configuration Utility.” Click on the “Startup” tab and then uncheck or disable everything in this window except for your anti-virus software. You could then turn back on programs as you discover you need them.

The goal here is to get rid of unnecessary programs to make your computer run faster.

This week, the question is: What do all these programs do?

The smart-aleck answer to that question is, “You’ll find out soon enough because you’ll discover some programs don’t work because you turned them off.”

A better answer, though, is that the internet provides us with some resources where we might be able to find out the purpose of all these programs in the startup group.

Armed with answers about what these programs do, you can make informed and intelligent decisions about whether you want to use them.

For example, when you are troubleshooting your sluggish computer, you follow the instructions above and you find the names of a lot of programs you do not recognize. The program CBWAttn.exe does not sound familiar, but point your browser to http://tinyurl.com/37oyk  and you will be able to search the database of programs to ascertain that it is part of a fax program. If you use the fax you need to turn this on, and if not, you can leave it turned off until you need it. Leaving it turned off when not needed is probably going to help speed up your computer a bit.

Another internet site containing a lot of useful information about startup programs is found at http://tinyurl.com/35vnz.

As I wrote last week, computer programmers can be an arrogant breed. Some of them assume that if you install their email program you will want to have it start automatically every time you turn on your computer. Well, I for one do not want some self-important computer programmer deciding to turn on his or her program every time I boot my computer. I will click on the icon to start that program when I am ready to use it, thank you.

As you go down the list of all the programs set to automatically start when your computer starts, you are very likely to find that some of them are advertising robots designed to monitor your surfing habits, others are system tray icons and others are “phone home” programs.

The latter are a real waste of computer resources some vendors add to their software. The “phone home” program wastes memory and processor time by running, it wastes internet bandwidth by connecting with its home page, and it does all of this constantly just to check and see if there is a new version of the program they can sell you. Then every so often it pops up a message saying, “There is now a newer version of this program available and you need to give us your address and credit card number so we can send it to you.”

A number of these programs you will find using MSConfig are not necessary to run all the time, and many are not and never were necessary at all. Feel free to use MSConfig to deactivate these unnecessary programs and reap the benefit of a slightly faster computer.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.