[patwannabe]

I'm still having issues with my back button, but I'm ignoring that right now and have another question. My "cleaner" is "Advanced Windows Care" which I really like. There's a section called "start up". It shows 15 programs that run at start up and say that none of them are necessary (at start up). I'm going to list them as they are and then ask my question.
SoundMan
OpwareSE2
SunJavaUpdateSchedule
Adobe Photo Downloa..
Quick Time Task
Quick Time Task
nwis
nwis
ctfmom.exe
MSMSGS
swg
All trustworthy, but not necessary (it says)
The last 4:
TvMediaCenter
NvCplDaemon
NvCplDaemon
RemoteControl
These show "unknown" and I have to uncheck the 3rd listing every time I run my scan.
So here's my question: How can I get rid of the duplicates, do I need to, and can I get rid of everything? What will happen if I do? (One time I deleted my sound from the Control Panel and had to find it again.) I don't want to mess anything up. I don't know how to get to the "delete" for these start up items (assuming I want to.) Thank you. I'll get back to the "back button" problem when I can do the right wording to make myself clearer. Thank you, Patwannabe

[new tech guy]

Originally Posted by patwannabe

I don't want to mess anything up.e

If you keep running that registry cleaner you will! Those things should be avoided like the bubonic plague as they don't necessarily know what is not needed and what is, they typically "guess" at what entries are good and not. Secondly, there is no documented proof that a system truly does improve in performance from registry "cleaning" or "optimizing". A quote from the moderator "Elvandil" puts it best "if your system had to search the entire registry every time it needed to find something, it would be incredibly slow and unresponsive" the fact is, the system uses different keys that jump through the registry to whatever the operating system or program is searching for. Therefore a few stray pointers that are no longer valid or old dll entries are not going to do much to system performance. In fact, it is likely that one of these tools may "fix" something that allows your system to function causing a corrupt operating system that will not boot. The only fix from somthing like that is a reinstall in most cases. So i would ditch that registry cleaner and stay away from anything that promises to clean or optimize the registry. Yes occasionally you may have to go in and fix something very specific but, these cases are far and sparse.

To finish my speech.... what does help however is defragging the registry or "compressing it". This is harmless as it does not remove anything from it, it just clears blank lines and various gaps that occur in the registry over time from program changes, file changes, etc. This reduces the size of the registry and reduces its access time. There are various tools for that job if you search around on this site im sure you will find some posts of it.

As for your list, you could disable the quicktime tasks, adobe, MSMSGS, and id leave the rest alone.

[flavallee]

Get rid of Advanced Windows Care and any other program that you use for "cleaning" and "boosting" and "optimizing" your computer. They're useless and do nothing to improve speed or performance.

As "new tech guy" has already advised you in so many words, continual use of registry "cleaners" is going to cause you grief.

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If you're interested in trimming down your startup load, post a HijackThis log here and I'll be glad to assist you.

And watch your typos. You incorrectly spelled 3 of those startup entries.

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[new tech guy]

Originally Posted by flavallee

As "new tech guy" has already advised you in so many words, continual use of registry "cleaners" is going to cause you grief.
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Sorry about bein wordy

[flavallee]

It was meant as a compliment.

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[patwannabe]

Thank you to all of you for your input. Although I have been using Advanced Windows Care for almost 2 years, I will listen to your advice and trash it. I value your comments. flavallee, all of the entries that I listed were exactly as they were listed on the start up list. I am interested in your "HiJack This" log thingy. How do I get to it, where do I go? FYI: I think I ask dumb questions but bear with me because I've been out of high school for 60 years. This world has changed some. Just to be funny: I took a "think test" in an email and got 19 of the 25 questions correct (the average was 7) so I still have a few bricks left in the stack, (need a smiling emoticon here) but computers are a different ballgame. Thanks again to all of you. You're great. Patwannabe
APOLOGIES TO FLAVALLE: yes, there are three typos !!! Thank you.

[flavallee]

Go here and click the green icon to download and save HijackThis 2.0.2.

Close all open windows, then install it in its default location: C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis.

Run a scan with it - which will take 30 seconds or less.

Save the resulting log in Notepad.

Return here, then copy-and-paste the entire log here.

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