Laptop running very slow, too many startup programs?

Hello SpottedCow and welcome to Seven Forums.

This tutorial (particularly Item # 9 for startup programs) shows how to optimize Windows 7.

Optimize Windows 7

A lot of the Forum experts suggest stopping everything except your anti-virus program from running at startup. Item # 9 links you to another tutorial that shows a few different ways to disable or remove programs you do not want to have start when Windows 7 starts. Take a look at Method Three (using system configuration.)

Hello Marsmimar,

I just received your message and I'm going to look into this right away. Thank you for the quick reply, I'll message back as soon as I follow the steps provided. Thanks again.

You're welcome. Hope it helps. :)

Hello Marsmimar,

After looking over a lot of these optimization procedures I noticed I was coming across the same issues I was having before, I don't know what "programs/files" are safe to disable. I'm able to navigate to where I need to be but I just don't know what I should disable or what programs exactly I can uninstall. From your previous post, what you said other experts on this forum do as far as stopping everything from running at startup but your antivirus, would that be OK? Where it shows my programs that startup, my antivirus isn't in that list. I work first shift so I won't be on for about 9 hours but I'll be sure to check back. Thanks.

SpottedCow88 said:

Hello Marsmimar,

After looking over a lot of these optimization procedures I noticed I was coming across the same issues I was having before, I don't know what "programs/files" are safe to disable. I'm able to navigate to where I need to be but I just don't know what I should disable or what programs exactly I can uninstall. From your previous post, what you said other experts on this forum do as far as stopping everything from running at startup but your antivirus, would that be OK? Where it shows my programs that startup, my antivirus isn't in that list. I work first shift so I won't be on for about 9 hours but I'll be sure to check back. Thanks.

I can understand your confusion. Just as an example, on my computer I went into msconfig<dot>exe. I disabled everything at startup except for my touchpad (Alps), and my two primary anti-malware programs Microsoft Security Essentials (Microsoft Se...) and Malwarebytes (Malwarebyt...). I simply unchecked (disabled) all other items in msconfig except for those three startup items. Once the computer boots and I begin my session, I can manually access any of the startup programs on an "as needed" basis.

Marsmimar,

After going through the tutorial to optimize Windows 7, I've improved the performance of my start up drastically. Thank you very much for your help.

That's great news! Thanks for posting back.