A Windows XP Tip: The Startup Folder

From time to time you may notice that your computer is booting slowly or that the performance of your PC seems sluggish. Checking your startup folder for any unnecessary applications may help.
A quick way to boost your computer's performance is to reduce the number of applications it runs when starting up. Some programs, such as anti-virus and hardware utilities, need to be run automatically, but an overabundance of startup applications can overwork a computer and use up too much memory.

The easiest way to keep programs from running automatically is to remove them from the computer's Startup folder:
1. First double click My Computer from the desktop, or select it from the Start Menu.
2. Double click the hard drive (default C:\).
3. Open the Documents and Settings folder.
4. Open a specific user account folder, or select All Users.
5. Double click the Start Menu folder.
6. Select Programs.
7. In the Programs folder, find the Startup folder and double click.

Any shortcut within this folder will launch a program automatically on startup. To take it off the list of startup applications, simply delete the shortcut. No worries because you are not actually deleting the program but simply stopping the program from starting automatically (on boot).