Autoruns

[Guest Thomas A]

Is there any way to know what's safe to disable using autorun program that

wont make my PC unstable ... Like a list what to keep and what not to ?

[Guest R. McCarty]

Re: Autoruns

 

It's mostly a determination of what functionality the Startup or Watchdog

provides. SysInternals "AutoRuns" ( Everything TAB ) shows a complete

list of startups and a brief description for each entry. One key element in

Autoruns is the publisher, which shows the company name for an entry.

The publisher name helps identify the program the startup belongs to.

 

One piece of advice would be to avoid disabling any startup that is part

of your security software ( AV, Firewall....)

 

AutoRuns available here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

 

 

"Thomas A" <ThomasA@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:C9C2CC55-9E85-43A7-BEAA-474887664F9C@microsoft.com...

> Is there any way to know what's safe to disable using autorun program that

> wont make my PC unstable ... Like a list what to keep and what not to ?

[Guest Poster Matt]

Re: Autoruns

 

Thomas A wrote:

> Is there any way to know what's safe to disable using autorun program that

> wont make my PC unstable ... Like a list what to keep and what not to ?

 

Well you can turn off Microsoft Entries (hide in the options menu), so

that should make your OS safe.

 

Beyond that no. It's impossible for AutoRuns to keep a database of all

software available and what you may have installed on your system and

then uninstalled (with the uninstalled software not deleting it's own

entries from the registry properly or completely), or indeed what 3rd

party software is essential at boot-up and what isn't.

 

It's just a matter of going through the categories in AutoRuns and also

looking in Task Manager's Processes list and/or using the similar lists,

but with full path info., from the system info. freeware program

'Everest' which you can find and download with a google search and will

help you identify which entries belong to which software packages by

virtue of the full path.

 

For identifying processes and entries in AutoRuns and establishing which

are safe to turn off, google is your friend. Search on an entry or

process name and look at a selection of the results. There are lots of

process info. pages which will provide info. on what the process is,

does, criticality level, and even wheyher safe to delete or not. Often

you will need to look at several pages though to get good info. about a

particular process - so it's a long drawn out tedious exercise, but a

helpful one to keep your system running tip-top.

 

Finally don't delete an entry from AutoRuns, just uncheck it so that it

is restorable later. Do a reboot and make sure your system is working

fine, perhaps even over several days. If your system appears to be

working fine for a few hours don't be tempted to use the delete feature

in AutoRuns, or you may find a few days later that you've deleted your

Anti-Virus's auto-update feature's entry and then you can't restore it

which you would have been able to do if you'd just left the entry

unchecked rather than deleted!! Delete only those things that you are

100% sure about and by very wary of doing that at all.

 

Finally - oops, 2nd finally :) - keep notes of what you've done and why,

my 'AutoRuns Notes.txt' file has been worth it's file size in gold on

several occasions and stopped me repeatedly looking up what a particular

entry actually is/does from one month to the next. After all how is

anyone supposed to remember that RTHDCPL.exe is part of my sound card's

setup? A note in my text file and ... ignore that, it's fine, what's next...

 

HTH.

[Guest Robert]

Re: Autoruns

 

On Feb 18, 7:26 am, "R. McCarty" <PcEngWork-NoSp...@mindspring.com>

wrote:

> It's mostly a determination of what functionality the Startup or Watchdog

> provides. SysInternals "AutoRuns" ( Everything TAB ) shows a complete

> list of startups and a brief description for each entry. One key element in

> Autoruns is the publisher, which shows the company name for an entry.

> The publisher name helps identify the program the startup belongs to.

>

> One piece of advice would be to avoid disabling any startup that is part

> of your security software ( AV, Firewall....)

>

> AutoRuns available here:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

>

> "Thomas A" <Thom...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

>

> news:C9C2CC55-9E85-43A7-BEAA-474887664F9C@microsoft.com...

>

>

>

> > Is there any way to know what's safe to disable using autorun program that

> > wont make my PC unstable ... Like a list what to keep and what not to ?- Hide quoted text -

>

> - Show quoted text -

 

I've found Autoruns very helpful and will add to just check the

entries you don't want running at Start-up as you can always restores

these entries, don't delete them. Better to be safe than sorry,

otherwise you could end up with a larger problem than you started

with.

Robert