What is safe to uncheck in autoruns to make pc start up quicker?

Question

My computer suddenly stopped running, eventually I had to restore to factory settings however now its start up takes forever. I read how to uncheck icons to try and speed it up but I'm afraid of taking away something essential, what must I keep?

Answer 1

If it's restored to factory setting yet unusually slow, I can only think of one reason.

The hard disk.

Do you hear weird cranky sound or feel 'violent' vibration? How old is your system anyway?

Answer 2

In msconfig, you can check the box that says "Hide signed microsoft entries" Your NEW list of startup items are not essential to running your PC (they're not allowed to be - if they were, safe mode wouldn't work!), though you may lose things like advanced keyboard or mouse function, depending on what you have, but you can re-enable that easily enough.

Answer 3

I assume a fairly normal XP, Vista or W7 install (which is it?).

Look at the manufacturer column. To be safe, keep anything to do with Microsoft, Intel (or other processor type), or the machine manufacturer.

Ditch anything else that you know you don't need on startup. Common ones that get in there include itunes, quicktime, MS office, java updates, windows media player, any palm device or mobile phones that you connect to the computer. You don't need these on startup, although most of these are update checkers that you'll have to remember to run manually every few weeks. They may well put themselves back in the startup list after an update, so you'll need to remove them periodically.

Also, if it's a fresh OS installation, you may well have some trial software and other bloatware from the manufacturer which you can fully uninstall.

Answer 4

I assume that "restore to factory settings" means that you've returned the computer to its state as when bought.

If that's the case, your computer should have returned to its old performance.

But if it didn't, then there is a new problem that has appeared since you bought it, and it's most probably hardware.

I suggest that you run as many hardware checkers as you can, and if you find nothing, take the computer to be checked by a workshop.

Answer 5

What is safe to uncheck in autoruns

for the less experienced user i recommend to open the Logon tab in Autoruns and stick to the sections HKLM\Run and HKCU\Run