Belly said:
Sometimes when I've removed items from Start-up using msconfig they appear on the next bootup. And annoyingly they list themselves below, on a separate line, rather than just puting the tick back in the box. The msconfig box always appears smaller than I would like.
Are there any solutions? (I don't want to uninstall the programs)
Thanx
The best way to stop programs from your task tray is to go into the progams and find the option pages and then look for the tasktray option in there.
For those that don't supply the option, just choose "exit" from their menus to quit the program.
For those that don't supply a "quit", use task manager to zap them out of existance.
Then goto msconfig and untick them. As the program is now not running, it shouldn't put itself back into the tray.
Re: msconfig - the window is stuck at one size (though I think the Win9x one's can be resized). There was a day when we all used to use 800x600 screens and that wouldn't of mattered. And the reason you are seeing items being "reinserted" is because msconfig is only a prettified front end to the more complex registry. So when you "untick" there is actually work occuring to the registry to remove the item from the relevant section and "back it up" elsewhere. So when a program comes along and puts it's settings back, you then end up with the two entries - one ticked, and one unticked. So it is not a bug, but a feature.
Also listen to bledd. He is dead right with his suggestions. I will totally backup that comment about removeing the bloatware that is McAfee and Norton and replace with NOD32 or I personally use AVG Free (
http://free.grisoft.com). This can give you a huge speed increase - especially if you are low on RAM (under 512MB in XP)
The note about msconfig not showing everything is also worth noting if you think you have been infected with a virus. There are a number of other places things can hide. HijackThis is a big friend.
Learn how to use it