Startup Items

While resolving another problem, a technician recently suggested unchecking a number of items in the startup folder on my laptop so they no longer loaded at startup. The result was a dramatic improvement in boot up speed, with no apparent loss of functionality. Without paying for technician time, I want to do the same for my wife's laptop (elderly Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100, XP Pro) but many of the items shown in its MSCONFIG Startup folder seem to be different from mine so I don't know what I can safely uncheck to stop them loading at startup. Can anyone advise? Sorry for the long list, but here they are:
NvCpl
00HotKey
000StTHK
EM_EXEC
TPWRTRAY
TOSHKCW
TFNFS
TMESRV31
TMERzCtl
TMEEJME
TMESBS32
NeroCheck
nwiz
qttask
Oplmsbo1
Reader_sl
realsched
ctfmon
wwDisp
rundll32
Microsoft Find Fast
Office Startup

Many thanks for your help.

 

Hi, alistair.

Here's some "fishing gear" for you.

First, try disabling unnecessary startup components of applications from within those applications. Otherwise, I suggest you choose one of the following handy stand-alone utilities for controlling your startups. (You do not need to install the application.) I suggest you use one of these utilities instead of MSCONFIG to control your startups.

• Microsoft/Sysinternals Autoruns
• Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel

CAUTION: Be certain you do not disable any necessary startups. See the references below for details that will help you decide what is reportedly safe to disable.

Check out the following links to help you decide what startups you might want to disable.

• Pacman's Startups - Contents: (I suggest you read this "Contents" page for background information.
  

Another resource that may be helpful is

• AnswersThatWork: TASK LIST PROGRAMS (including WinNT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista Services)
  Keep in mind this database includes descriptions of memory-resident processes that are not necessarily automatically started when you boot your computer.