Windows 7: Saving System Configurations - Replacement for msconfig

To be able to clear out excess processes and allow more CPU for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9), I would like to find a replacement for msconfig so I could disable some startup utilities and processes and save the configuration.



Has anyone heard of a utility that permits us to save and reload different system configurations?

Try win patrol. I use it. May not be exactly what you want, but it is a valuable addition to your software. Read up and it you like it, give it a try.
http://www.winpatrol.com/

You can do what you want, from msconfig, to some extent however. Just untick the services you do not want at start up.

I dont think you can customize MSCONFIG per user. What you can try is create a different user account for game-playing, then control user specific startup items. See this tutorial (Method 2, option 1).

Startup Programs - Change

In addition, keys of interest in the registry, again user specific will be the following:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\Run

(HKCU= HKEY_CURRENT_USER)

If you plan to shut off the same processes over and over, you could create a batch file that kills the processes one by one (using taskkill, I believe), and then calls the game's main .exe file at the end. You would use this batch file then anytime you wanted to play the game.

Also you can control services using sc.exe.

Enter this at a command prompt for usage details:

sc --help

If you want more powerfull program than msconfig check out Autoruns:
Autoruns for Windows

If you want a program to stop some services and programs before starting a game check out FSAutoStart:
Download FSAutoStart 1.1 Build 11 Free - Allows the user the ability to automatically shutdown services and programs to provide as much resources - Softpedia