Tip of The Day: Defrag During Safe Mode
When defragmenting your hard disk, you can defrag it while your system is under safe mode. In principle, fewer drivers loaded means fewer CPU usage. This way, you can save extra system resources for more important tasks, like in this case, you can make the defrag faster and stable.
Autoruns - This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor (A starting list of auto-run locations was obtained from David Solomon’s “Windows Internals” seminar), shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. A “Hide Signed Microsoft Entries” option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system. You’ll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically! - text taken from sysinternals website
Just minutes later after I installed this nifty little program, I found out some entries that I think it can be disabled to improve the bootup timeout and further more save valuable system resources.
Here’s the list of entries I disabled
Summary:
Before I made this changes, I see to it that I know what I am doing. As what you can see from above, I disabled 5 entries that belongs to MS Windows Media Player. I did this because in the first place, I am not using this media player, same with the entries that belongs to the other MS bundled apps like MS Outlook, MS Briefcase, MS Windows Messenger, and MS Themes. Along with the disabled items are the programs that I actually use. I disabled entries for Ewido and dB PowerAMP because I don’t think it is necessary for this programs to run during system bootup. In addition, I found two weird startup entries that belongs to Canon’s Bubble-Jet Printer driver and an Internet Explorer 4 Suite Splash Screen even though I never owned any Canon device nor I have an Internet Explorer 4 bundled with my Windows XP SP2. I also disabled Windows features like Help and Support, Scheduled Tasks, Offline Files, Search Assistant, and History, because I don’t find this things useful for my computing needs.
Conclusion:
I managed to disable 26 windows explorer autorun entries without experiencing a single system error. This customization works absolutely fine with me. If you want to test it for yourself, I cannot give you 100% assurance that this settings will also work in your set-up. With this fact, I cannot be held responsible to any unexpected events that might occur while applying this settings.
