When Windows boots up, it’s not just the operating system loading itself into memory: a variety of other apps, tools, and services start up as well, configured to automatically start up with Windows. And depending on what you’ve installed, many of them may be starting up without your knowledge or consent.
Sometimes this can be very useful, especially when you don’t have to worry about forgetting to launch something important. You want to make sure your antivirus software is always running, for example, and that your media server or backup software is always available. On the other hand, as you add more and more applications to your computer, a lot of them may be set to automatically start up with Windows, which means it takes longer for Windows to get ready for use, and there are more programs constantly running in the background, taking up precious system resources.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that Windows gives you plenty of control over which applications start up with the operating system itself, so you can streamline the list to make sure only the most useful tools are included.
First of all, it helps to know what you’re dealing with: restart Windows, and after logging in, give your computer a few minutes for everything to load up. Then you can take a look at what’s running.
The most obvious places you will see which apps have loaded are on the taskbar and in the system tray (down in the lower right corner, by the clock). Look for the small arrow pointing up; if you click on that, it will show you all the loaded apps whose icons didn’t fit in that right-hand space.