Question on startup programs

I'm gonna make this as simple and short as possible.

So, i got a nice new acer travelmate 2480 for xmas.
It's a nice laptop it seems, except for one thing.

The laptop included a LOT of acer's own programs, and additional programs to 'ease' your use of the computer. With this i mean programs like Acer Orbicam, cyberlink powerdvd, empowering technology, realtek hd audio manager etc etc etc... the list is very long.

Of course many of these programs might be useful sometime. But i just can't stop being pissed off at these programs slowing down the computer, requesting updates, taking up empty spaces on the taskbar, or simply put, eating up my memory and just 'being there'.

My question: Which of these can you suggest that i remove immediately? Which of these are important components of the computer?

Just seems ironic that when i check processes under task manager for my laptop, it shows twice as many programs running than my stationary computer, that has 270gb of memory and a hundred more programs...

Thanks in advance

 

Well a permanent fix is to go ahead and backup the entire hard drive partition with Acronis True Image 7. Then create a restore DVD so you have a 2nd backup safety line, then wipe the entire hard drive and install xp. This is the only true way to remove FAT32 and or other garbage from your pc.

The other solution is to go ahead and give us a screen shot of your msconfig startup. This will tell us what is currently starting, and what is not needed.

To do this do the following

Start ---> Run ---> Msconfig ---> Startup Tab




Notice how you'll need to scroll down and show us more of what is starting up on your pc. Use Microsoft Paint to crop and save the file as a .jpg and then upload it to www.imageshack.us

From there we can help you.

--ssx--

 

plus a couple of other programs that i constantly keep installing to my computer, such as norton, which eats a lot of memory...

 

I am interested in this for the same reason: getting rid of pre-loaded "garbage" software that slows down a perfectly good laptop!
Last year a friend bought a Dell and used a utility called "Decrapifier" which had been developed by an individual for his own use and made available as freeware. It seemed to work well and speeded up his Dell. Although at that time it removed a load of stuff without giving an option to see what it was about to remove.
I just googled for it now and came up with this link:
http://www.freewaregenius.com/2006/12/24/pc-decrapifier/

It looks like it has been improoved now to show a list of what it will remove, and will also work on non-Dell machines. May be worth a try after doing a "full system backup".

 

I think you way overestimate the effect any of these pre-installed programs and utilities have. Some of them actually come in handy at times. There's so much free hard drive space these days that it's hardly worth the bother to uninstall anything unless you know it will conflict with something else you want to install (mainly antivirus software). Almost everything that puts an icon in the system tray has an option not to do so. But if your system is slow, it won't be because of any of these utilities. I don't consider any of these as problematic. I would be much more upset about having a bunch of pre-installed "trial" versions of things like MS Office, MS Works, etc. - things that really take up a lot of space and resource (unless you want them).