Try My Trick: Microsoft

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Best of Software Utilities for Windows By Try My Trick

Best of Software Utilities

When using windows it is better to go for some of the software which can perform a task very easily without going for complex traditional methods.These utility software are very useful,powerful yet free. In some cases it is better to go for traditional methods and apps in windows which can perform the task without a software.

In one of my posts i have provided each and every hidden app in windows. Hidden apps in Windows and see what are the apps hidden for normal user in windows.

Operating System

While going through operating System it is better to go for Windows operating system because as a normal or a limited user the way of operating system design and performance is better than other kind. For Home based users it is better to go for Windows XP or Windows7. But recently Microsoft have announced their discontinued Support for XP, so it is better to go for Windows 7. For touch screens and look and feel it is more suggested to go for windows8. For people with huge money in their banks and never mind of spending money i suggest Apple MAC. Mac on the other hand one of the best operating system for home based PC's but its cost is somewhat not reasonable. For low hardware configurations and no budget for operating system you can go for Linux flavors. Linux is open source and many of the vendors are providing Linux operating system for Free. As per my concern i suggest Ubuntu,Mandriva and Fedora. Linux supports low hardware configurations also. In Mainframe or Server PC's Many of them use linux because linux is secure operating system.

Cleaners

Cleaning refers to the removal of unwanted storage space or files from the computer memory. Unwanted data will be available at many locations, each and every app creates some files of its functioning and are temporary, some apps removes those files after the use and some of them wont they left unwanted files in the storage. the operating system also creates some of the files for its use and should be deleted by a tool. For this i first suggest traditional way i.e running the following commands through RUN, some of them are 'recent','temp','%temp%' etc, run without quotes. Anoter interesting tool is windows disk clean up for windows. Open Run(windows+R) and type 'cleanmgr.exe' and enter. You will now select the root drive and check the files you want to delete and clean. Open your browser and clean history,saved forms data etc. It is somehow complex to to go through each and every application and clean memory. A software called CCleaner will do this task automatically. In this you can clean up everything from OS files to Browser cache.

Disk Clean Up CCleaner

Browsers

Browsers used for surfing the internet. Its a Mirror of Servers data at client's Desktop. Any Operating system is shipped with a default browser as like windows shipped with Internet Explorer. While considering speed,performance and Connectivity browsers are ranked according to users usability. As per my concern for moderate conditions of speed of the data Mozilla Firefox and Chrome Serves better for low connectivity the solution is opera. If you have High speed data connection You may use any browser but i suggest Internet Explorer. All these browsers are available for free of download.

Downloaders

For Downloading the content from the internet we need clients. Many of the clients are available in the market some of them are free and some are about money. For any content first search Torrentz, you may get the fresh and unseen content here. You can download the .torrent file and use the clients like Utorrent and Bittorrent clients to download the file. In these clients you go to settings and adjust the bandwidth settings with download speed to unlimited and upload speed to 1Kbps. This increase the performance of the software. Another interesting Download client is Internet Download Manager, Many people call it as IDM. It is available as 30 day trail and need to purchase activation key after it. Any how many crack software are also available use them with care.You ca download youtube videos with IDM, the better and best download tool for the century.

Registry

Registry maintenance and cleanup is critical task for a simple user who is not clear about it and its function. Using some of the registry cleaners in the market causes the complete breakage of the registry which causes the failure is OS functioning, So to do clean up the registry safely i recommend CCleaner, it not only cleans the computer and also cleans registry. I simply cleans the registry but will never cause the failures in the registry.

Security

System Security is a typical task for the novice users. Protecting system from viruses,trojans and worms is not an easy task. Anti virus can do this task well, but antivirus software are numerous in the era. Computer user will mainly search for better product at less or no cost. I too agree with the line of action by the end user.For securing your computer i suggest Microsoft Security Essentials(MSE) which will secure your computer more than a bank protecting your money. One thing for the anti virus users is that any antivirus will perform better by frequent update. the antivirus updates its virus database for the new viruses. It is available for free to download at Microsoft. In windows8 it is renamed as Windows Defender. It needs to update for every 7 days. Some of the other antivirus in this area are Kaspersky,Avast,Ecet,McAfe,Panda Cloud,CalmWin,Avira,AVG,K7 etc.

Firewall

A Firewall protects the computer from outbound and inbound connections. It is a Registry of Inbound and Outbound Policies.By default Windows is shipped with windows Firewall, in some cases it is turned off. So turn it On to get complete protection. Another Best firewall Software is ZoneAlarm which also perform the task well but need to invest some money.

PDF Readers

I suggest Foxit Reader as the best in this category because in foxit we may not only read a PDF but we can create a PDF using this. This kind of functionality is not available in Adobe reader. You can also create a PDF file by using DoPDF, download and install DoPDF and then Print the document you can find the DoPDF printer which outputs your document as PDF.

ZIP and RAR

Nothing found better than WinRAR in this category. WinZIP also performs well here. using WinRAR we can zip,rar or compress and decompress any file using Win RAR.7Zip also new and good as trending now.

Media and Players

Similar to browsers any operating system is shipped with a media player like windows media player in windows XP. For media I suggest VLC the product of the decade. Windows media player is also best but some codecs are required other than the application. 321 media Player,KMPlayer and media monkey are also considered. iTunes for MAC is the only best option for MAC.

Office

Office work is also the home work for many of the employes now a days. So Office produts like word,power point are more used at home too. I suggest Libre Office. Back to the line 'Computer User Searches for Best product with low or no cost' . Libre Office is open source so just download and use simply. Microsoft Office formley known as MSOffice is also best tool but need to buy this product from microsoft. Ashampoo's Office is little useful but cost seems high.

Video,Audio Editing

Here no competitors in reach for Format Factory. Audio Video Picture can be mixed or can make a movie or grab a portion of video or audio.

Text to Speech Systems- A Speech Pad Software by Try My Trick

Text To Speech

Some more gap between my posts. I think you all waiting for a marvelous content from me. Meanwhile in these days i have designed a software namely Speech Pad.

This software is free to use and download. This software mainly works on the Microsoft's Text to speech engine. Before going deep into the software details I would like to discuss what is text to speech and their uses in current days.

Text To Speech and Speech to Text, these are next generation requirements. In a movie we may see a machine working with the voice like Iron Man's Jarvin. Looks like something unavailable or not invented. Microsoft have moved some steps further and have implemented them. TTS and STT are mainly helpful in reducing our work. In Windows7 and later versions you have the facility of controlling your computer through your voice. I think this thing have implemented to pig the world that the next generation is voice commands rather than opening Run and typing commands.

Here in My Software I have designed this similar to a notepad. You can think or will have a question We have notepad why to use your speech pad. My answer is to ask you questions about notepad.

1. Will Notepad provide you any way to change the color of text?

2. Can you change the background color of Notepad?

3. Can your text written in Notepad Speaks?

4. Can You save the text as an audio File?

Answer: No

Solution: Tough Requirements have small and smart but unknown Solution. Yes My Speech Pad Can answer the above questions.

In speech pad you have the option of changing the color of foreground(Text) and background. You can listen your text as voice. You can save your text as audio file. Also you have the option to change the voice levels and speech of the speech. Another interesting thing is you can use either Male or Female voices.

A screen shot of the application is given below

I stop explaining about the product, You can Download the file from Below Link

Speech Pad

Help us to improve by sharing our content. Don't forget to add comments about the product.

Change Text on XP start button

Step 1 - Modify Explorer.exe File

In order to make the changes, the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows needs to be edited. Since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. For purposes of this article I have used Resource Hacker. Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

get this from h**p://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip

The first step is to make a backup copy of the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer. Place it in a folder somewhere on your hard drive where it will be safe. Start Resource Hacker and open explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer.exe.

The category we are going to be using is "String Table". Expand it by clicking the plus sign then navigate down to and expand string 37 followed by highlighting 1033. If you are using the Classic Layout rather than the XP Layout, use number 38. The right hand pane will display the stringtable. We’re going to modify item 578, currently showing the word “start” just as it displays on the current Start button.

There is no magic here. Just double click on the word “start” so that it’s highlighted, making sure the quotation marks are not part of the highlight. They need to remain in place, surrounding the new text that you’ll type. Go ahead and type your new entry. In my case I used Click Me!

You’ll notice that after the new text string has been entered the Compile Script button that was grayed out is now active. I won’t get into what’s involved in compiling a script, but suffice it to say it’s going to make this exercise worthwhile. Click Compile Script and then save the altered file using the Save As command on the File Menu. Do not use the Save command – Make sure to use the Save As command and choose a name for the file. Save the newly named file to C:\Windows.

Step 2 – Modify the Registry

!!!make a backup of your registry before making changes!!!

Now that the modified explorer.exe has been created it’s necessary to modify the registry so the file will be recognized when the user logs on to the system. If you don’t know how to access the registry I’m not sure this article is for you, but just in case it’s a temporary memory lapse, go to Start (soon to be something else) Run and type regedit in the Open field. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon

In the right pane, double click the "Shell" entry to open the Edit String dialog box. In Value data: line, enter the name that was used to save the modified explorer.exe file. Click OK.

Close Registry Editor and either log off the system and log back in, or reboot the entire system if that’s your preference. If all went as planned you should see your new Start button with the revised text.[/b]

Make XP boot faster

Follow the following steps

1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

Quick Msc

Start > Run >

Certificates - certmgr.msc

Indexing Service - ciadv.msc

Computer Management - compmgmt.msc

Device Manager - devmgmt.msc

Disk Defragmenter - dfrg.msc

Disk Management - diskmgmt.msc

Event Viewer - eventvwr.msc

Shared Folders - fsmgmt.msc

Local Users and Groups - lusrmgr.msc

Removable Storage - ntmsmgr.msc

Removable Store Operator Requests - ntmsoprq.msc

Performance - perfmon.msc

Services - services.msc

Windows Management Infrastructure (WMI) - wmimgmt.msc

Windows XP Hidden Apps

To run any of these apps go to Start > Run and type the executable name (ie charmap).

1) Character Map = charmap.exe (very useful for finding unusual characters)

2) Disk Cleanup = cleanmgr.exe

3) Clipboard Viewer = clipbrd.exe (views contents of Windows clipboard)

4) Dr Watson = drwtsn32.exe (Troubleshooting tool)

5) DirectX diagnosis = dxdiag.exe (Diagnose & test DirectX, video & sound cards)

6) Private character editor = eudcedit.exe (allows creation or modification of characters)

7) IExpress Wizard = iexpress.exe (Create self-extracting / self-installing package)

8) Microsoft Synchronization Manager = mobsync.exe (appears to allow synchronization of files on the network for when working offline. Apparently undocumented).

9) Windows Media Player 5.1 = mplay32.exe (Retro version of Media Player, very basic).

10) ODBC Data Source Administrator = odbcad32.exe (something to do with databases)

11) Object Packager = packager.exe (to do with packaging objects for insertion in files, appears to have comprehensive help files).

12) System Monitor = perfmon.exe (very useful, highly configurable tool, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about any aspect of PC performance, for uber-geeks only )

13) Program Manager = progman.exe (Legacy Windows 3.x desktop shell).

14) Remote Access phone book = rasphone.exe (documentation is virtually non-existant).

15) Registry Editor = regedt32.exe [also regedit.exe] (for hacking the Windows Registry).

16) Network shared folder wizard = shrpubw.exe (creates shared folders on network).

17) File siganture verification tool = sigverif.exe

18) Volume Contro = sndvol32.exe (I've included this for those people that lose it from the System Notification area).

19) System Configuration Editor = sysedit.exe (modify System.ini & Win.ini just like in Win98! ).

20) Syskey = syskey.exe (Secures XP Account database - use with care, it's virtually undocumented but it appears to encrypt all passwords, I'm not sure of the full implications).

21) Microsoft Telnet Client = telnet.exe

22) Driver Verifier Manager = verifier.exe (seems to be a utility for monitoring the actions of drivers, might be useful for people having driver problems. Undocumented).

23) Windows for Workgroups Chat = winchat.exe (appears to be an old NT utility to allow chat sessions over a LAN, help files available).

24) System configuration = msconfig.exe (can use to control starup programs)

25) gpedit.msc used to manage group policies, and permissions

Windows XP General Performance Tweaks

IRQ Priority Tweak
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ PriorityControl]

You will need to create a new DWORD: IRQ#Priority (where # is the number of the IRQ you want to prioritize) and give it a setting of 1. This setting gives the requisite IRQ channel priority over the other IRQs on a software level. This can be extremely important for functions and hardware subsystems that need real-time access to other parts of the system. There are several different subsystems that might benefit from this tweak. Generally, I recommend giving either the System CMOS or the video card priority. The System CMOS generally has an IRQ setting of 8, and giving it priority enhances the I/O performance of the system. Giving priority to the video card can increase frame rates and make AGP more effective.

You can give several IRQs priority, but I am not entirely certain how the system interacts when several IRQs are given priority – it may cause random instabilities in the system, although it is more likely that there's a parsing system built into Windows XP to handle such an occurrence. Either way, I would not recommend it.

QoS tweak
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QoS (Quality of Service) is a networking subsystem which is supposed to insure that the network runs properly. The problem with the system is that it eats up 20% of the total bandwidth of any networking service on the computer (including your internet connection). If you are running XP Professional, you can disable the bandwidth quota reserved for the system using the Group Policy Editor [gpedit.msc].

You can run the group policy editor from the Run command line. To find the setting, expand "Local Computer Policy" and go to "Administrative Templates" under "Computer Configuration." Then find the "Network" branch and select "QoS Packet Scheduler." In the right hand box, double click on the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth." From within the Settings tab, enable the setting and then go into the "Bandwidth Limit %" and set it to 0%. The reason for this is that if you disable this setting, the computer defaults to 20%. This is true even when you aren't using QoS.

Free Idle Tasks Tweak
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This tweak will free up processing time from any idle processes and allow it to be used by the foreground application. It is useful particularly if you are running a game or other 3D application. Create a new shortcut to "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks" and place it on your desktop. Double-click on it anytime you need all of your processing power, before opening the application.

Windows Indexing Services
Windows Indexing Services creates a searchable database that makes system searches for words and files progress much faster – however, it takes an enormous amount of hard drive space as well as a significant amount of extra CPU cycles to maintain the system. Most users will want to disable this service to release the resources for use by the system. To turn off indexing, open My Computer and right click on the drive on which you wish to disable the Indexing Service. Enter the drive's properties and under the general tab, untick the box for "Allow the Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching."

Priority Tweak
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ PriorityControl]

This setting effectively runs each instance of an application in its own process for significantly faster application performance and greater stability. This is extremely useful for users with stability problems, as it can isolate specific instances of a program so as not to bring down the entire application. And, it is particularly useful for users of Internet Explorer, for if a rogue web page crashes your browser window, it does not bring the other browser windows down with it. It has a similar effect on any software package where multiple instances might be running at once, such as Microsoft Word. The only problem is that this takes up significantly more memory, because such instances of a program cannot share information that is in active memory (many DLLs and such will have to be loaded into memory multiple times). Because of this, it is not recommended for anyone with less than 512 MB of RAM, unless they are running beta software (or have some other reason for needing the added stability).

There are two parts to this tweak. First is to optimize XP's priority control for the processes. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ PriorityControl and set the "Win32PrioritySeparation" DWORD to 38. Next, go into My Computer and under Tools, open the Folder Options menu. Select the View tab and check the "Launch folder windows in separate process" box. This setting actually forces each window into its own memory tread and gives it a separate process priority.

Powertweak application
**********************
xxx.powertweak.com

Powertweak is an application, which acts much like a driver for our chipsets. It optimizes the communication between the chipset and the CPU, and unlocks several "hidden" features of the chipset that can increase the speed of the system. Specifically, it tweaks the internal registers of the chipset and processor that the BIOS does not for better communication performance between subsystems. Supported CPUs and chipsets can see a significant increase in I/O bandwidth, increasing the speed of the entire system. Currently the application supports most popular CPUs and chipsets, although you will need to check the website for your specific processor/chipset combo – the programmer is working on integrating even more chipsets and CPUs into the software.

Offload Network Task Processing onto the Network Card
*****************************************************
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ Tcpip \ Parameters]

Many newer network cards have the ability of taking some of the network processing load off of the processor and performing it right on the card (much like Hardware T&L on most new video cards). This can significantly lower the CPU processes needed to maintain a network connection, freeing up that processor time for other tasks. This does not work on all cards, and it can cause network connectivity problems on systems where the service is enabled but unsupported, so please check with your NIC manufacturer prior to enabling this tweak. Find the DWORD "DisableTaskOffload" and set the value to 0 (the default value is 1). If the key is not already available, create it.

Force XP to Unload DLLs
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer]
"AlwaysUnloadDLL"=dword:00000001

XP has a bad habit of keeping dynamic link libraries that are no longer in use resident in memory. Not only do the DLLs use up precious memory space, but they also tend to cause stability problems in some systems. To force XP to unload any DLLs in memory when the application that called them is no longer in memory, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer and find the DWORD "AlwaysUnloadDLL". You may need to create this key. Set the value to 1 to force the operating system to unload DLLs.

Give 16-bit apps their own separate processes
*********************************************
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ WOW]
"DefaultSeparateVDM"="Yes"

By default, Windows XP will only open one 16-bit process and cram all 16-bit apps running on the system at a given time into that process. This simulates how MS-DOS based systems viewed systems and is necessary for some older applications that run together and share resources. However, most 16-bit applications work perfectly well by themselves and would benefit from the added performance and stability of their own dedicated resources. To force Windows XP to give each 16-bit application it's own resources, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ WOW and find the String "DefaultSeparateVDM". If it is not there, you may need to create it. Set the value of this to Yes to give each 16-bit application its own process, and No to have the 16-bit application all run in the same memory space.

Disable User Tracking
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[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer]
"NoInstrumentation"=dword:00000001

The user tracking system built into Windows XP is useless to 99% of users (there are very few uses for the information collected other than for a very nosy system admin), and it uses up precious resources to boot, so it makes sense to disable this "feature" of Windows XP. To do so, browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer and find the DWORD "NoInstrumentation". You may need to create this key if it is not there. The default setting is 0, but setting it to 1 will disable most of the user tracking features of the system.

Thumbnail Cache
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[HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced]
"DisableThumbnailCache"=dword:00000001

Windows XP has a neat feature for graphic and video files that creates a "thumbnail" of the image or first frame of the video and makes it into an oversized icon for the file. There are two ways that Explorer can do this, it can create them fresh each time you access the folder or it can load them from a thumbnail cache. The thumbnail caches on systems with a large number of image and video files can become staggeringly large. To disable the Thumbnail Cache, browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced and find the DWORD "DisableThumbnailCache". You may need to create this key. A setting of 1 is recommended for systems where the number of graphic and video files is large, and a setting of 0 is recommended for systems not concerned about hard drive space, as loading the files from the cache is significantly quicker than creating them from scratch each time a folder is accessed.

Windows XP Start up Tweaks

Windows Prefetcher
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParameters]

Under this key there is a setting called EnablePrefetcher, the default setting of which is 3. Increasing this number to 5 gives the prefetcher system more system resources to prefetch application data for faster load times. Depending on the number of boot processes you run on your computer, you may get benefits from settings up to 9. However, I do not have any substantive research data on settings above 5 so I cannot verify the benefits of a higher setting. This setting also may effect the loading times of your most frequently launched applications. This setting will not take effect until after you reboot your system.

Master File Table Zone Reservation
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ FileSystem]

Under this key there is a setting called NtfsMftZoneReservation, the default setting of which is 1. The range of this value is from 1 to 4. The default setting reserves one-eighth of the volume for the MFT. A setting of 2 reserves one-quarter of the volume for the MFT. A setting of 3 for NtfsMftZoneReservation reserves three-eighths of the volume for the MFT and setting it to 4 reserves half of the volume for the MFT. Most users will never exceed one-quarter of the volume. I recommend a setting of 2 for most users. This allows for a "moderate number of files" commensurate with the number of small files included in most computer games and applications. Reboot after applying this tweak.

Optimize Boot Files
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[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Dfrg \ BootOptimizeFunction]

Under this key is a text value named Enable. A value of Y for this setting enables the boot files defragmenter. This setting defragments the boot files and may move the boot files to the beginning (fastest) part of the partition, but that last statement is unverified. Reboot after applying this tweak.

Optimizing Startup Programs [msconfig]
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MSConfig, similar to the application included in Win9x of the same name, allows the user to fine tune the applications that are launched at startup without forcing the user to delve deep into the registry. To disable some of the applications launched, load msconfig.exe from the run command line, and go to the Startup tab. From there, un-ticking the checkbox next to a startup item will stop it from launching. There are a few application that you will never want to disable (ctfmon comes to mind), but for the most part the best settings vary greatly from system to system.

As a good rule of thumb, though, it is unlikely that you will want to disable anything in the Windows directory (unless it's a third-party program that was incorrectly installed into the Windows directory), nor will you want to disable anything directly relating to your system hardware. The only exception to this is when you are dealing with software, which does not give you any added benefits (some OEM dealers load your system up with software you do not need). The nice part of msconfig is that it does not delete any of the settings, it simply disables them, and so you can go back and restart a startup application if you find that you need it. This optimization won't take effect until after a reboot.

Bootvis Application
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The program was designed by Microsoft to enable Windows XP to cold boot in 30 seconds, return from hibernation in 20 seconds, and return from standby in 10 seconds. Bootvis has two extremely useful features. First, it can be used to optimize the boot process on your computer automatically. Second, it can be used to analyze the boot process for specific subsystems that are having difficulty loading. The first process specifically targets the prefetching subsystem, as well as the layout of boot files on the disk. When both of these systems are optimized, it can result in a significant reduction in the time it takes for the computer to boot.

Before attempting to use Bootvis to analyze or optimize the boot performance of your system, make sure that the task scheduler service has been enabled – the program requires the service to run properly. Also, close all open programs as well – using the software requires a reboot.

To use the software to optimize your system startup, first start with a full analysis of a fresh boot. Start Bootvis, go to the Tools menu, and select next boot. Set the Trace Repetition Settings to 2 repetitions, Start at 1, and Reboot automatically. Then set the trace into motion. The system will fully reboot twice, and then reopen bootvis and open the second trace file (should have _2 in the name). Analyze the graphs and make any changes that you think are necessary (this is a great tool for determining which startup programs you want to kill using msconfig). Once you have made your optimizations go to the Trace menu, and select the Optimize System item. This will cause the system to reboot and will then make some changes to the file structure on the hard drive (this includes a defragmentation of boot files and a shifting of their location to the fastest portion of the hard disk, as well as some other optimizations). After this is done, once again run a Trace analysis as above, except change the starting number to 3. Once the system has rebooted both times, compare the charts from the second trace to the charts for the fourth trace to show you the time improvement of the system's boot up.
The standard defragmenter included with Windows XP will not undo the boot optimizations performed by this application.