Startup manager program?

Question

What is a good (free) startup manager program, that will tell me what programs/utilities are necessary, and which ones are not recommended before I remove them?

Answer 1

There are several free startup managers but their main use is to display all programs which load on startup, leaving the user to decide which programs to include or exclude. Some startup managers include the name of the company for each startup program and list it as "known" or "unknown." You can try CastleCop's Startup List (http://www.castlecops.com/StartupList.html)

The website has a database of over 14,000 startup programs. Besides just giving you a short description of the startup program, the database will also tell you if the program is safe or malicious. In addition, it will tell you if the program is vital and should therefore be a startup program or the program is totally not necessary and should therefore be removed from the list.

As for software programs, many security software programs have a startup manager feature, including: Spybot Search & Destroy, Windows Defender, WinPatrol, Spyware Terminator and many more free anti spyware programs.

My personal favorite startup manager is AutoRuns from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/autoruns.mspx). The program is completely free. The following is a description of the program written by the developers:

Introduction

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

Autoruns' Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc.

You'll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically!

Autoruns works on all versions of Windows including Windows XP 64-bit Edition (for x64) and Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition (for x64).

Answer 2

This should help.....
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php