One of my ongoing frustrations is finding my laptop becoming slower and slower during bootup or during normal processing. Of course these processes don’t just appear magically, it’s because I’ve downloaded something to evaluate or use.
I occasionally run msconfig to determine if some new process has attached itself to my system startup list that I’m unaware of. 
Recently I removed a number of processes from my startup list and the result was significant in reducing my startup time which had grown to 4 minutes. I’m still trying to figure out which process was the culprit (I’m thinking it may be Microsoft Search…).
Some processes are very persistent in coming back after you remove them using msconfig and you may have to go into their configuration screen to stop them. Two examples of this are the processes reader_sl from Adobe and QTTask from QuickTime. They keep appearing in your startup settings unless you go in and change their configuration startup settings.
The most mysterious area for me has always been the dozens of “Services” that startup in the background when your system boots. You can view them by using msconfig or by going into CONTROL PANEL|ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS|SERVICES. Each Service can be set to start automatically, start manually or be disabled.
I set several well-known services to start manually since I don’t use them that often. Some examples are my database and Apache services. When I need them I go start them manually.
The questions I always have about Services are:
- What does this or that Service really do?
- Is this Service necessary for my environment?
- If I disable a Service will my system start going crazy? (I can vouch for this one personally…)
I recently ran across an article on Tech Republic that provides some great information on this topic. You can read more about it HERE or you can download the PDF below that I’ve made for your convenience.
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