Get rid of the Junk, & Speed things up!

Get rid of unwanted, unused, and trial software.
Nearly all new computers produced today come with a myriad of software preinstalled, and running in the background. Some of these programs are trial versions, of programs that the vendor wishes you to buy. And others are complete programs that you may never use the entire time you own the computer. These two types of programs use up valuable resources, and take up valuable room on your hard drive which can be used to store something else. By uninstalling unwanted and unused programs, you can also get back some of that speed that your computer used to have when you first bought it. Before you can uninstall a program you need to turn it off.


Let's begin by turning off some of these startup programs.
In the column to the right of this page, you will see a program in the links section called Startup Inspector. Download and install this program on your system. This program will identify all the programs that are running on start up, and put them in plain simple language so you can understand what they are, and what they do. This program does require an Internet connection to work properly! Please take a few minutes, read the directions and familiarize yourself with the operation of this program.

Lets get Going...
C startup Inspector icon>C all startup items>C consult.

At this point you should see a complete list of all the programs that are set to start, when you turn your computer on. Most of the programs in this list don't need to be running on start up! In the lower left-hand corner of the screen, you should see a rating legend, that tells you what the ratings mean. Let's begin by removing the check mark from the programs that are not required. Once you have removed the green check mark from these programs, place your pointer on one of the programs, now right-click. On the little window that opens up, Select remove all. Now C apply>C OK.
Now continue removing programs that you know you don't need to start. But be very careful not to remove system required programs, these are the ones marked with a star in the ratings column! All so you don't want to turn off your antivirus, or spy ware programs, you want these to start when your computer does. Once you have finished don't forget >C apply>C OK.

Now that you've finished turning off all of the startup programs that are not required by your system. Let's move on to the next part of this procedure, uninstalling the unnecessary programs. If you haven't done so already, please exit from startup analyzer.

Open Add/Remove programs
C start>C control panel>C Add Remove programs.

Once the add remove programs window opens, it will take a minute to list all the programs that are on your computer. Now look over the list of programs here, and remove programs that you know that you've never used. A good example would be AOL, if you do not have AOL as an Internet provider, you do not require their programs! Another good example would be, a trial version of Microsoft Money. Left click once on the program you wish to remove, this will highlight the program, to the right you will see a button that says change/remove click this to begin removing the program. Once the program is removed you may have to restart your computer to finish the procedure, if this is required you will be prompted to do so. Continue this procedure until you have removed all unnecessary programs from your computer. Please be careful not to uninstall Microsoft works, or the full edition of Microsoft office! Without either one of these programs your spellchecker will not work! If you're not sure whether you need a program or not please do not delete that program!! It's better to keep a couple programs that you're not sure of, than delete them and find out later that you require them to run your system...

Now you've completed all the steps in this article, you will need to defragment your system. To do this please follow the instructions in, Basic System Maintenance part 1