Lean up Windows 7 with Msconfig

 

Most people are blissfully unaware of all the absolute JUNK that gets run when Windows starts up, mostly due to registry entries installed by various programs, drivers, and what not.

Much of this junk can be safely disabled. You can use Msconfig to do it. Here’s how:

Hit the Windows Start button at the lower left side of your Taskbar. Click RUN, then enter “msconfig” and click OK.

You’ll see four Tabs – the one you want is “Startup”. You can start disabling items by unchecking them. Some items will be automatically reinstalled on the next startup by windows or by necessary drivers. But you can disable a lot, and that means less memory usage and less resource-hogging.

Here are the first two screens of mine:

 

You can see that I have most of it (from the first screen) and all of them (on the second screen) disabled, along with even more on the third screen (not shown).

I could care less about Adobe Updater, Itunes, Zune and whatever. If I need to run Itunes, I plug my iPhone into the USB, and run ITunes. It will say that the Apple Mobile Device Service is not running. So what do I do? I go into Services and start the booger, and everything is fine. I have it set to “Manual”.  I absolutely do not need this service running and hogging resources on my machine when I’m not updating my iPhone. Same with Zune and a hundred other useless programs including Google Update, which does not behave well even if turned off in msconfig (Are you listening, Google? How about lets make our stuff user-friendly?)

Lean up your machine. I guarantee, you’ll be a happier developer.