One of the most common ways a Windows personal computer becomes slower is because of the CPU and RAM being overwhelmed. It could be that you need new hardware, but let’s try a cheaper solution first. The slowing of your computer could be a software issue.

As a personal computer owner, you probably install applications on a regular basis. But as you install programs, you often times end up installing things that you didn’t know were being installed. And those things stay in your computer’s ‘Startup’ folder. Any executable inside your computer’s Startup folder starts running in the background whenever you turn on your computer. This means that the more things you have in your Startup, the slower your computer will be, whether you wanted those things to run or not.

You can edit your Startup list to counteract this effect. Follow the arrows below to find your Startup editor on Vista.

1. Open your start menu

2. Click on 'Change startup programs'.

Now choose a program to disable in the startup menu folder. Be warned that any program disabled here will not start up when the computer starts up, but will have to be executed manually.

Click 'yes' on the popup.

If you change your mind, come back later and reactivate the program in the startup menu, in a similar fashion to the way you deactivated it.

Below are a few programs I tend to disable in the Startup. These programs will still run when you need them, but you don’t need them running all the time. 

Quicktime

iTunes

Google desktop

Google updater

The best way to decide whether to disable something in Startup is to look up its functionality online, and then think to yourself “Do I use this functionality often enough to justify having it run in the background?” Most programs will still execute when you need them, even if they don’t run in the background. It will just take them slightly longer to load(This extra time still generally being < 1 second if your hardware is fairly new).

For example, since I disabled Quicktime, the next time I watch a movie on the Internet, it will take slightly longer to load(Startup time) than if I kept it running in the background. Allowing Quicktime to run in the background would mean no Startup time, but all computations on my computer would take that much longer because my computer would always be thinking about Quicktime. I prefer having a short Startup time and very fast computations than to having no startup time and very slow computations. Startups happen once, but computations are always happening.

It’s a bit like juggling. You can either juggle ten balls at a time, and have to wait a long time for each ball to come down, or you can juggle one ball and have it in your hand instantly. Admittedly, if you want one of the other ten balls, you have to reach down and pick it up, but in the long run you will save time.