Cleaning MSConfig

Toshiba Satellite A665-S5184X laptop

I've looked-up most of these entries, but only get answers as to what they are & where they came from; not descriptions as to WHAT they do & if they are safe to remove from startup. Which can I remove?

TPwrMain.EXE: Toshiba's Power Saver, I believe helps control my laptop's power/battery feature.
HSON.exe: Toshiba's Instant-On Utility, I believe this enables & manages my laptop's touch buttons.
TCrdMain.exe: either Toshiba's Flash Card Memory slot/the keys that flash on my screen when I press the FN key.
RAVCpl64.exe -s: Realtek HD Audio Manager.
RAVBg64.exe /FORPCEE3: HD Audio Background Process.
TosVolRegulator.exe: Toshiba Volume Regulator.
igfxtray.exe: Intel(R) Common User Interface.
hkcmd.exe: Intel(R) Common User Interface.
igfxpers.exe: Intel(R) Common User Interface.
KeNotify.exe: Program responsible for the 'F keys' alternative functions.

I'm not sure, but msconfig isn't for permanent changes. It's a diagnostic utility.

If you find that you can go without a few of these, then re-enable them in msconfig and then go to the Registry where they can be found as shown by msconfig and delete the subkey (subkeys are in the right-hand pane) for each one. They'll have the same name, so finding them will be easy. After deleting, log out of Windows and log back in (or just restart).

When you do this (or if you do), then you'll notice that it has completely disappeared from msconfig!

It shows how to achieve a Clean Boot in Clean Up Factory Bloatware which has others steps to help recover lost performance in factory preinstalled Win7.

However nothing compares to getting a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to run with Win7's native performance.

TwoCables-
Yep, that's what I usually do. I check what the entries are & if I need them, if not, I go into the registry & delete those unneeded entries. It's just a few of these that are left that I'm not so sure of yet. Although, I did remove the igfxtray.exe; it's just a notification tray icon connected to my graphics driver & I didn't need it there.

The only thing I see in your screen print that I would not disable is the Avast Antivirus.
You can disable everything else and see how things work for you.
Most of these look like factory OEM programs that aren't really needed.
If you find you do use some of these other programs, you can always re-enable them.

CJW said:

TwoCables-
Yep, that's what I usually do. I check what the entries are & if I need them, if not, I go into the registry & delete those unneeded entries.

You must be pretty good with Windows tech to be able to edit the registry!
If you're not aware of it, a good utility is MS Sysinternals Autoruns.
Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

Autoruns is much more advanced and capable than MSCONFIG.

There are many Sysinternals utilities that go beyond the built-in Windows utility.
I don't recommend these for most people, but if you can edit the registry, you might appreciate these if you learn them...
My personal favorite (most used) is Process Explorer rather than Task Manager...

DavidW7ncus said:

CJW said:

TwoCables-
Yep, that's what I usually do. I check what the entries are & if I need them, if not, I go into the registry & delete those unneeded entries.

You must be pretty good with Windows tech to be able to edit the registry!
If you're not aware of it, a good utility is MS Sysinternals Autoruns.
Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

Autoruns is much more advanced and capable than MSCONFIG.

There are many Sysinternals utilities that go beyond the built-in Windows utility.
I don't recommend these for most people, but if you can edit the registry, you might appreciate these if you learn them...
My personal favorite (most used) is Process Explorer rather than Task Manager...

Being able to edit the Registry for this requires just a few basic skills:

1. Knowing where to look in the Startup tab for the location of the key in the Registry
2. Knowing how to access the Registry Editor
3. Knowing how to access that key which requires knowing how to expand a tree structure
4. Knowing how to locate and delete a file because this skill is required for deleting the subkeys

All in all, this is a very basic thing, especially when easy-to-follow instructions are given.

I'm ok at editing the registry & not too scared of poking around in there, despite all of Microsoft's warnings . That said, I did try the "safe" route before of 1st unchecking items in MSConfig & rebooting; only to find out that when I rechecked the ones I really wanted to stay, I lost some of their functionality even though they were still listed in MSConfig & the registry correctly. Strange & a pain to get back to normal (Factory Restore!)

I'm also looking into my optical drive & having a little problem trying to figure this one out.
In my Notification Area there is an icon for my optical drive. I always assumed that a built-in optical drive is always on, so why do I have/need an icon in the Notification Area? When I take a look at the options (attached pic) I see no way of removing this from the Notification Area & if I find out how, will this disable the drive? I'm just wondering because I'm tring to shorten my laptop's boot time (currently at 37-40 seconds).

It may be a function of AHCI hotplugging. Is the OD also listed in Safely Remove Hardware where all plugged drives show up under AHCI installs? You can uncheck Show and it should vamooski.

May I ask what startups you need beside Avast and why? It's a specialty of mine and I like to hear reasoned arguments for keeping certain OEM software because it's true some users find it beneficial even though most is crapware.

gregrocker said:

May I ask what startups you need beside Avast and why? It's a specialty of mine and I like to hear reasoned arguments for keeping certain OEM software because it's true some users find it beneficial even though most is crapware.

Hi Greg,
I helped someone a while back that said they were getting "Some type of HD warnings"...
I found it was an OEM Utility displaying these warnings.
I created the System Recovery discs, and within weeks the HD did fail...
The HD was replaced under warranty by Best Buy and the Laptop OEM.
Restoring the system was much easier having the Recovery discs that most people don't create.
In this case, I thought it was good that an OEM utility did alert the user of a problem before a catastrophe.