Hello! Welcome to the Perfectdrivers guide to using msconfig.
This guide will help you to better understand how msconfig works and how to use
it properly. Included are pictures which will (hopefully) make the task easier.
To begin, let's briefly cover what msconfig is. It's a tool made by Microsoft
that allows you to remove items from automatically starting up when Windows
boots. For whatever reason, Microsoft didn't include it in Windows 2000 and it
wasn't around during the Windows 95 days.
I assume you already have msconfig downloaded and installed. (more info is
here.)
Go ahead and run msconfig. The screen will look similar to the image below. We
want the startup tab.
After we click on the 'Startup' tab, we'll see something similar to the image below. Clicking on the area in the red box and dragging it to the right will allow us to see the 'Command' area better. The command area will give us a better idea of what each line is and whether or not we want to leave it on or turn it off. More on that later.
Once we've moved that over, it'll look like the picture below. Notice each
line in the command area.
Unchecking the box in the left side turns it off. Let's go through each line in
this example and decide whether to leave it on or turn it off. Of course, your
startup tab will have different items listed, but you'll get a general idea of
what to look for.
Line 1: In this case it's pretty clear what this item is. It's the MS
AntiSpyware tool. If I were unsure, I could look up gcasServ.exe on Google to
find out more information about the file.
Line 2, 3 & 4: These are all a part of Norton Antivirus. Like line 1, I know
what these are and want them. They stay checked.
Line 5: Pretty clear what this is. Adobe's Acrobat. Is it harmful? No. Does it
need to start up every time I boot Windows? Probably not. Items like this are a
judgement call. I'm going to turn it off.
Line 6: Hmmm. No idea what this is. Probably some software that never got
uninstalled properly. I'm unchecking this one to turn it off.
Line 7: SNDMon.exe. This turns out to be a sound utility that installs when my
sound drivers were installed. This one also seems like a judgement call. I'm
turning it off.
Line 8 & 9: By looking up NvCpl.dll and nwiz.exe we find that both of these
files are a part of Norton Antivirus. They stay checked.
We won't go any further in this example. Like I've said before, your start up
items will be different and you'll have to make your own decisions about what to
turn off. You can always go back in and turn them back on by re-checking them.
Here's what it ends up looking like:
