[Paleopsych] NYT: Programs That Start When XP Does

[Premise Checker]

Programs That Start When XP Does
New York Times, 5.5.5
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/technology/circuits/05askk.html

[This is very valuable to anyone who has a computer that has slowed to a crawl. 
I'll be working on eliminating programs that hog RAM and do nothing for me.]

    By J.D. BIERSDORFER

Programs That Start When XP Does

    Q. My Windows XP machine takes forever to start up. How can I tell
    what programs are loading during the start-up process?

    A. One way to sneak a peek at what programs start up when you turn on
    your computer is to use the System Configuration Utility that comes
    with Windows XP. To get to it, go to the Start menu and select Run. In
    the Run box, type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) to start
    the utility.

    Click the Startup tab in the System Configuration box to see the list
    of programs that open when Windows starts up, along with check boxes
    to turn each program off or on during the next start-up.

    If you aren't sure what some of the listed programs actually do for
    your PC, you can look them up at the Windows Startup Online Search
    page ([1]www.windowsstartup.com/wso/search.php) before deciding if you
    want a program to start up automatically.

    [2]Microsoft has a page of information about using the System
    Configuration Utility to troubleshoot start-up problems with your PC
    at [3]support.microsoft.com/kb/310560/EN-US.

    Other Web pages offering help for using the utility to sort out your
    start-up woes include [4]www.netsquirrel.com/msconfig and
    [5]vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/startup.htm.

A File by Any Name May Not Copy

    Q. My wife gave me a small U.S.B. flash drive a while back to
    transport files between my Mac at home and my office computer. The
    U.S.B. drive seems to be pretty finicky, though, and won't let me use
    file names with certain characters like slashes. Why is this?

    A. To make them compatible with both Windows computers and Macintosh
    systems, just about every U.S.B. flash drive sold these days is
    formatted with the FAT32 file system. FAT32 is one of the file systems
    Windows uses to keep track of data stored on a drive, but Macs can
    also understand it and will display the stored folders and documents
    when you plug in the drive.

    [6]Apple's [7]iPod Shuffle music player, which can also function as a
    U.S.B. drive for toting large files, also comes formatted right out of
    the box in the FAT32 system.

    Using certain typographical characters in file names, however, is one
    thing you can do on a Mac but not on Windows. You can't name files
    with slashes, brackets, colons, semicolons, asterisks, periods, commas
    and a few other characters on the FAT32 system.

    You may get error messages if you try to copy files with such
    characters in the names from your Mac to the U.S.B. drive - or if you
    do successfully copy them, the file names may be changed on the U.S.B.
    drive.

    If you're using the U.S.B. drive to transfer files between Macs, you
    can get around finicky FAT32 by rounding up the files you want to
    transfer from the Mac and creating an archive file with them. In Mac
    OS X 10.3, click on each file to select it, then go to the File menu
    and select Create Archive.

    Give the archived file a simple name like Files and let the Mac create
    it. Then copy the Files.zip archive to the U.S.B. drive. You can also
    use utility programs like Stuffit to create archive files on older Mac
    systems.

Useful Add-Ons For Firefox

    Q. Where can I find extension programs for the Firefox Web browser
    that do things like display the current weather in the browser window?

    A. Firefox, a free Web browser that comes in versions for Windows,
    Macintosh and Linux systems, can be easily customized with small
    extension programs that do things like add dictionary search tools to
    the browser window or provide controls for your computer's
    digital-audio software so you can control your music while you surf.

    The Forecastfox extension, which displays the current weather in the
    corner of the Firefox window, can be found at
    [8]forecastfox.mozdev.org.

    The latest version of Firefox itself can be downloaded at
    [9]www.mozilla.org/products/firefox, where there's also a link to more
    Firefox extensions.

    Circuits invites questions about computer-based technology, by e-mail
    to QandA at nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general
    interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

References

    1. http://www.windowsstartup.com/wso/search.php
    2. 
http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MSFT
    3. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560/EN-US
    4. http://www.netsquirrel.com/msconfig
    5. http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/startup.htm
    6. 
http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=AAPL
    7. 
http://tech2.nytimes.com/gst/technology/techsearch.html?st=p&cat=&query=ipod&inline=nyt-classifier
    8. http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/
    9. http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox