Creating a Clean Start User Account

Howdy All,

I am trying to figure out how to create a new user account on my computer with almost no programs starting with it. I want to keep my default account with everything starting up, but I want another account that will start "Clean" for playing a few of my CPU intensive games. Currently, I have to go through and shut down everything that starts manually and that takes about 5 - 10 minutes. I have searched through this and other forums and found many solutions to this, but they all change the startup on all users. That would work for most people, but I want to keep the startup programs running with my regular account. I think I could use msconfig to do this, but I found several people that recommend not using it for what I'm trying to do. Can anyone help me here?

Thanks,
n003lb

 

What is it that you do not want starting?

DRD

 

Primarily, anyhting that isn't needed to run windows. Things like my printer manager, ATI Control Panel, and a few other programs that I don't need when I'm playing a game. 2 major problems are a weather program, and ebay's toolbar. Both of them have popup windows that, if they activate during a game, can cause problems.

 

While an individual user can have their own startups, some things are a universal startup or all Users, such as Av programs, firewalls, and some video card stuff.

2 major problems are a weather program
The above sounds like adware, and I can almost guarantee you disabling it from startup may not eliminate other aspects or something else bundled with it from starting up anyway. Would it be AWS weatherbug? If so, it is what I thought.

 

Ebay Toolbar is a program that moniters my ebay watch list and alerts me to watched items that are ending soon.

My weather program alerts me to weather warnings or watches in my area. (Living in Kansas, this program is a must have, but I don't want it running when I start a game.)

Neither are Adware, they don't popup ads.

I just found out that Windows XP supports the ability to install multiple OSs on the computer. Is it safe to do that? Then, I could just setup one of them with pretty much nothing starting.

Thanks

 

You can Dual Boot. For info see here:

http://thpc.info/

 

Might be the simplest solution. However, check this. Right-click Start and select Explore All Users. Under Start Menu > Programs > Startup see if the programs are listed here. Also check under the listing for your user account.

Programs listed under All Users, as expected, run for all users. By moving these to a single user account, you can stop them from running when any other account is used.

Some other programs create these entries in the registry and this becomes a bit more difficult to manage.

DRD

 

Clean Start Up

Hi
You may want to try PC Magazine's Start Up Cop. They've just released a new version. However, it is a pay item but a small amount (I forget how much I paid when I got the original version, maybe $9 but it allowed 3 downloads). Go to www.pcmag.com and do a search for StartUp Cop.
Dennis