Girl Geekette dotNet

Here is a link I definitely thought was worth mentioning. A List of all the start up programs in Windows XP and wheter or not they NEED to run or are dangerous.

http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php?letter=&filter=&count=50&offse t=12500

If you are like I am and you are always trying to streamline your XP box to get only the services you NEED running in MSCONFIG or want to see if some programs are adware, viruses, trojans, drivers, etc.. this list has some of the most common, whether they are required and what they are. This has to be one of the most excellent resources I have seen.

To check to see what startup programs you have, Click on START then RUN And type MSCONFIG in the RUN box and hit ENTER. You will see a new window come up and the STARTUP tab on the right has all of the programs that start up when your computer boots. Just check these programs against the list and see if that program is needed or not.

Step 1: Backing up the system registry file 

- Close all open applications running on the desktop. 
- On the taskbar click Start and click Run. 
- A run dialog box will appear, into which you type regedit. Then click OK. 
- This will launch the Registry Editor 
- Click on Registry and then click Export Registry File. 
- When the Export Registry File window opens, choose somewhere on your hard drive to save this new file. It can be anywhere, but best to put it where you’ll remember saving it. Create a new folder, call it Backup Files or something easy, and put it there. 
- Type in the name you wish to call your file IE; registrybackup and select the Export Range = All button. This ensures you save all of the file and not just selected bits.  It will become the registrybackup.reg file. 
- When you’ve clicked Open and the Backup Files folder is open, this same button will change to Save. 
- Click it and your registry backup will be saved. After a few seconds, you’ll be able to edit or close the Registry Editor window as normal.

Note: Any changes you make to the registry now WILL NOT be saved to the backup copy of the registry. Your Backup becomes independent of the original file and can be used to overwrite the changed registry at any time.

Step 2: Restoring the system registry file