Glary07

[Damien Symonds]

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Startup Manager

This is a handy feature to run maybe once a year.  There are other ways to do this in Windows too of course, but here is as good as any.  Choose "Startup Manager" in the bottom left corner:

It gives you a list of all the programs that start up automatically with your computer, and a simple switch to turn them off if you don't want them.

This list might surprise you, if you've never looked at it before.  It can be astonishing how many little bits of software want to run in the background of your computer.

Some will be very obvious.  Others won't be recognisable.  But if you click on them, it gives you more information.  For example, I didn't know what "Status Monitor Application" was, so I clicked on it and it told me it was a Brother program for my printer:

I print fairly frequently, so I was happy to leave that one turned on.  But there were some others further down that I turned off:

Please understand, turning off these programs doesn't uninstall them from your computer.  It just stops them launching automatically when you boot up.  If you can keep the auto-launch programs to a minimum, hopefully your computer's startup time will be faster.

(If you see programs in this list that you don't want on your computer at all, you should uninstall them via the Control Panel in the usual way.)

Once you've made your changes, you can simply close that window.

Settings >>

[Josie Stahl]

Can you tell me whether these programs are crucial for startup:

Adobe CS6 Service Manager

Adobe GC Invoker Utility

Adobe Update Startup Utility

Checking their description doesn't tell me much.

[Damien Symonds]

Your Photoshop is so old now, I don't think you need to have any of those turned on.

[Josie Stahl]

So their purpose is for keeping it updated?

[Damien Symonds]

Well, the third one is at least.

[Josie Stahl]

ok. Thanks, Damien.