Speed Up Computer

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked about disabling services that are set to start up automatically as a way to speed up computer performance. This week, I’ll talk about reclaiming computer performance by reconfiguring programs to skip the auto-start.

Services v. Applications

What’s the difference you ask? A service is part of the operating system. It could include your network, the ability to log into a computer remotely, audio features, etc. These services are functions of the operating system. Programs may use them, or they may support features in applications, but they’re not applications by themselves.

Services do take up some system memory and they can be a little bit of a drain, but that’s not really where you’re going to get the speed boost from when you disable services. The speed increase comes from not having to load the darned thing in the first place, and not having to wait while the service performs its trick or times out.

There are good reasons other than speeding up computer performance for disabling services. Sometimes, services are just unnecessary and it’s good practice to disable those things you don’t need. Services can conflict with other services, so disabling an unneeded service may reduce the possibility that a conflict will occur. Further, some services aren’t very secure, and can be used by hackers to gain access to or control of your computer.

After you’ve disabled the unnecessary services, you can reconfigure applications that start automatically to wait for a manual start instead. Little utility applications, freebies, toolbars and other similar apps are big offenders in the auto-startup category. Shutting these pests down can give you an immediate performance boost.

To examine your startup items, type msconfig into the search bar and select it from the results. This is the System Configuration tool. The Startup Tab will provide a list of all of the applications that are configured to start at boot time. You can select the apps you don’t want to start automatically by unchecking the box to the left of the application’s name. You can also disable all startup items, but this is normally reserved for troubleshooting since there are a bunch of things you’ll want access to!

Once you’ve reconfigured your startup items, restart your computer and see if you’ve improved your situation. You may also get a significant performance boost from using a registry cleaner, like SpeedUpMyPC 2011, which runs in two minutes and can really give your PC a lift.

Photo Credit: The Web President, via Flickr