Do I really need to to run this program at startup ?

Do I really need to to run this program at startup ? That´s a question I´am asking myself from time to time. I check on my autostart entries regularly and it happens that I find a program sitting there that I´am not sure about. I simply uncheck the item most of the time, but this is not the right way to do this. I present you a good way to check on your autostart entries, it´s fast, free and easy.

First of all, you need a tool to check them out. You could use the run command and enter msconfig which should display the autostart items or you could use a third party tool like Autoruns from Sysinternals which i recommend for this task.

I will show you how to identify the programs that are running using either msconfig or Autoruns. For the sake of simplicity start msconfig using the windows run command and click on the startup item on the menu.

You see a list of programs that are loaded when windows is starting. You probably can identify some without looking them up, if that is the case and you don´t want them running on your system startup disable them.

Now, let us say you found an entry and don´t know why this is loaded by startup. Head to the CastleCops website and enter the filename that is loaded in the search field. If the file is found you see a description and a recommendation (status). In short, if the status shows Y=YES, you should keep it, if it shows N=NO you can disable it. There is also U=USER for users choice, X for definitely not required (often virii, malicious, spyware) and ? for unknown.

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autoruns
CastleCops