Extra Topics (Joe’s Blog Site)

I have created an article on How to speed up boot time using Sysinternals Autoruns. I strongly suggest that you read that article first. A lot of people are asking which startup program items can be deleted or unchecked in Sysinternals Autoruns that slows down the boot sequence and those harmful items added by trojans and spywares.

Well I found a great website that have a database of startup programs. It currently has 23,403 startup items on its database at the time of this writing. It allows you to search for programs that you find starting automatically on your computer and determine if they are considered to be harmful, optional, unnecessary, or necessary to run.

The database is alphabetically organized so you can browse through using its index. You can also use its search feature to find the program you want to know.

Each entry in the database will have a Status assigned to it. The key to this status is the following:

• Y - This status flag means that this entry should be left alone and be allowed to run as if it is unchecked it may break the functionality or use of a particular program.
• N - This status flag means it is unnecessary to run this program automatically when Windows starts as you can run it manually when necessary.
• U - This status flag means it is up to you whether or not you feel this program needs to run automatically.
• X - This status flags means the item should definitely not start up automatically. Items that have this flag are generally malware such as viruses, trojans, hijackers, spyware, etc.
• ? - This status flag means the status of this entry is unknown at this time and more research is necessary.

Link to list of startup program items: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/

First of all, if you’re wondering what Sysinternals Autoruns is and what it does, check my other post here on How to speed up your Windows XP/2000/Vista boot time using Sysinternals Autoruns.

When I first used Autoruns, the only question that bothered me is “Should I save the changes I made?”. I realized that this question has two answers, Yes and No. Yes, if you want to compare the current result with later results. And no if you’re probably thinking that you should save to apply the changes. Changes are automatically applied when you check/uncheck/delete items.

Save
After having a fresh installation of your Windows operating system or after optimizing your system (especially the registry) and when everything seems to be starting or loading smoothly, you should run Autoruns and Save the scan results. Why? Because after a while, after some new installations in your system, you might notice some delays in starting up Windows and might want to know the cause. Most probably there new items added to the start up entries. Be sure to remember where you saved the result.

Compare
To find out what recent entries have been added since you last saved, just use the compare feature. Select File|Compare…. then browse to the saved file, usually named “AutoRuns.arn”. And presto!!! All new items are highlighted green as shown in the graphic. Now it’s up to you if you want to delete the new entries or not. But be careful when deleting entries, they might cause some of your newly installed applications to misbehave.

Load
How about the load feature you say? Well it really doesn’t have much use. You can load a previously saved result just to see them but it doesn’t really apply it.