By Lou Dolinar
Second  in a series
Updated Feb. 14, 2006

Don't these people really really irk you? They infest your computer with voracious little processes that soak up memory and other system resources, that phone home and bang away at your Internet connection all night long. Your computer slows down, crashes, becomes unreliable. And you can't get rid of the little varmints, at least not easily.

I”m not talking about spyware, but rather, everyday software from reputable companies. Big companies like Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, little companies that write utilities you never heard of.

Rare is the software today that just installs itself on your hard drive, waits patiently for you to load and run it, then politely exits when you're done. Rather, most contemporary software installs little processes that always run when your start up your computer. The processes may hang around regardless of whether you even run the program they support, or lurk in memory after you unload. Some of these little processes are invisible unless you dig into the guts of your PC with the Task Manager (Right click on the Task Bar and select Task Manager) You'll see other signs of this in your system tray, the little area next to the clock to the right of the task bar. A half-dozen items is perfectly normal, but I've seen computers with 20 or more. Similarly, 40 or fewer processes listed in the process manager are no cause for alarm but a badly managed computer can have a lot more.

Excess processes and startup items create another problem: The more you have, the harder it is to determine which processes are spyware, and which are innocent. It doesn't help the the names of these gizmos are cryptic and incomprehensible, and that some malware uses the same name a legitimate background processes.

Now some software has to run all the time—firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, for example, monitor pretty much all the comings and going of data on your computer. In some cases, mere convenience is at issue. If you run MusicMatch every day, do you really need a process that automatically checks for updates? Programs that are always partially loaded into memory start up quicker, another convenience. The problems arise when you have a dozen or more programs that act like this, as much as screaming “It's all about me!” Sacrificing little in the way of functionality, I easily pared 50 odd active processes, as shown in the Task Manger in half and cut the memory usage from over 200 to less than 100 megabytes. The process is time consuming—save it for a rainy day.

Start with the programs themselves: If you don't need it, use Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel to get rid of it. Next, fish around in the menus of the programs you do keep (usually under “Preferences” ) and uncheck the optional check boxes that say something like “load at startup” or “load to system tray.” In most cases you'll still be able to get at the program from the Start Menu or Control Panel. Many programs will optionally start processes to auto-update; only enable this feature for the really critical ones, anti-virus, anti spyware, and firewall.

Some programs can't be controlled internally and instead are launched from the startup folder on the Start Menu, while others are hidden away in the Registry. To control these programs, you need to use a command-line utility, msconfig, which Microsoft keeps locked in the attic so little kids don't shoot themselves with it. This should give you some idea that you can mess up you PC in a fairly serious fashions, although msconfig always allows you to restore start items you've disabled.

Go to Start/Run and type in msconfig. You'll get a little box that says “System Configuration Utility.” The two tabs you'll concern yourself with are “Services” and “Startup.” Experiment with turning off various startup items. Pretty much anything related to music software can be turned off. Anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall modules should stay on. After that, I don't have any hard and fast rules, other than to look up the startup item name on Goggle and see what it does. Leave all your Microsoft-labeled services alone, but you can experiment with the others.

I came up with a pretty simple systems for isolating the stuff I really needed. First, I uninstalled my most critical software that typically creates a lot of mandatory startup items, namely my anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall and printing services. What was left was a lot of stuff that didn't require immediate access—fax services, for example, music programs and and various utilities like Real Networks and QuickTime that I could turn off. With the non-critical stuff out of the way, I reloaded my core software, all the while keeping track of what they added.

If you feel you need more control and information, never a bad idea, there are various add-on products you can use. See http://merijn.org/downloads.html for the freebie StartupList, by Merijin Bellkom. About the best of the for-fee software is WinTasks Pro, ($49.95, www.liutilities.com) which incorporates a database that give you extensive information about each running processes—including various forms of spyware and adware that may have infiltrated your PC. Even if you don't buy, the company also deserves a special commendation for excellent on site tutorials, and a public version of its process database. For a list of more free startup utilities, see http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwstartup.html.