Startup Issues at hand

How many of you have plopped down at your desk and turned on your PC only to find there are errors preventing it from starting up as it normally would? That is always so irritating to me. Everything was just fine when I shut this baby down last night and now some gremlins have had their way inside while I slept. lol While they may look frightening in first light, most are relatively simple to fix.

Know your limits though! If it looks way too complicated check around for some pricing guides and call local shops to see what your particular problem might run. Sometimes you can fix it yourself and for allot cheaper than taking it in somewhere or calling someone to come fix it for you. Some techie fixes are just not cost effective and your better off saving your money and picking up a new machine.

Some common problems are caused by RAM going bad, a hard drive going bad or a program loading on startup that is hanging everything else up. Once you boot up your machine, watch the lower right hand corner system tray and see how many programs load. These autoloaders can wreak havoc and slow your PC down considerably. You really should turn most of those things off, and only open them when YOU choose to open them. To see which programs are autoloading, and stop them from starting with your PC startup go to START>RUN then type in msconfig. In the pane on the right you will see several entries with check marks beside them. Simply un-check all items you do not want running at start up and select OK. Make sure you DO NOT un-check your Anti-virus software. You will be prompted to restart the machine. When you start up you will see a message stating you are using selective start up. Just choose *do not show this message again*. This should help with any slow startup issues you may have been having.

Stay tuned as I will add to this particular thread often with more tips on startup issues.