Windows Defender can identify and block troublesome autostart programs. The utility's clean interface makes it easy to view the autostart programs on your computer and — at your discretion — disable or delete them.
If you use Windows XP, you must download Windows Defender from Microsoft's Download Center (WGA validation required) and install it manually; it's baked into Vista. To open the program, click Start, All Programs (Programs in XP), Windows Defender. Once you're in Da Big Defender, click Tools, Software Explorer. Now you're ready to disable the autostart programs you want to muzzle.
Microsoft has another startup blocker that's part of the System Configuration utility (a.k.a. Msconfig). That tool's interface isn't as glitzy as Windows Defender's, but it covers the bases. To open Msconfig, click Start (Start, Run in XP); type msconfig; and press Enter. Click the Startup tab and uncheck the entry for any program listed to prevent it from starting automatically. (See Figure 1.)
Msconfig lists auto-starting programs
Figure 1. Msconfig lists the autostart programs on your system.
The things Software Explorer and Msconfig miss
Software Explorer and Msconfig dutifully list the autostart programs that reside in the better-known regions of Windows. In particular, they show programs in the Startup folders and the Run and RunOnce Registry keys.
Unfortunately, autostart programs can lurk in many places on your PC, and under various guises. For example, print spoolers run on startup and neither Msconfig nor Software Explorer list them. Likewise, Internet Explorer's BHOs (Browser Helper Objects) run whenever you start the browser, and they can give you conniption fits.
In Figure 1, you see an item called AVG Internet Security, but the program associated with that entry isn't AVG antivirus, it's AVG8_TRAY, a program that runs in the system notification area next to the clock and is used to control the AVG antivirus program.
AVG itself has hooks deep inside Windows that allow it to start whenever Windows starts. You can't get at those using Msconfig or Software Explorer; all you can control with these tools is the AVG icon in the system tray.
Msconfig and Software Explorer miss a lot. I know that, you know that, and the scum-meisters know it, too.
Adding to the problem: the version of Windows Defender in Windows 7 doesn't even have a Software Explorer. Microsoft ditched it: in Windows 7, it's Msconfig or nothing.
A better way — from Microsoft, no less
Microsoft distributes a free program that runs rings around Msconfig. Autoruns started as a freebie from a small company called Sysinternals and owes its existence to Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, two of the most knowledgeable Windows folks on the planet. In July 2006, Microsoft bought Sysinternals. Mark became a Microsoft Demigod, er, Fellow.
Microsoft promised that all of the free Sysinternals products would remain free, and wonder of wonders, that's exactly what happened. The latest version of Autoruns was released last week, freshly updated to handle the very latest programs, and it's still absolutely free.
To get Autoruns working, download it from Microsoft's TechNet site as a zip file. Extract the Autoruns.zip file and double-click Autoruns.exe to run it, no installation required. (The other program in the zip file, Autorunsc.exe, is the command-line version of Autoruns.)
Figure 2 shows the result of running Autoruns on the same machine as the one I captured the Msconfig screen from in Figure 1. See the difference?
Autoruns results
Figure 2. Autoruns' results on the same PC as the Msconfig list shown in Figure 1.
Digging deeper into your autostart assemblage
Autoruns lists an enormous number of autostart programs, some of which exist in the most obscure corners of Windows. The Everything tab shown in Figure 2 displays each autostart program in the order they run.
When I took a close look at Figure 2, a couple of surprises hit me. First — as I discussed earlier — the AVG Internet Security entry in Msconfig acquires a much more accurate description in Autoruns: it's listed as the AVG Tray Monitor. Second, the item marked Adobe Acrobat in Msconfig reveals itself to be the Adobe Reader Speed Launcher — not Acrobat and not even Adobe Reader, but in fact a completely expendable speedup routine.
How do I know it's expendable? I used another one of Autoruns' remarkable features: I right-clicked the entry and chose Search Online, which launched Firefox (my default browser), opened Google (my default search provider), and ran a search on the name of that program.
In this case, it's reader_sl.exe. A quick run through the Google results showed me that reader_sl.exe is a program that speeds up Adobe Reader, and one that I certainly don't need to autostart. Mystery solved.
Autoruns has many options — you can get a good overview of them on the Microsoft Ask the Performance Team blog. The feature I use mo