How To Prevent Unwanted Windows Programs From Loading At System

By: Balraj Dhaliwal

We all have them in our system tray, programs that load up and
use precious memory resources and take up valuable space on your
taskbar. Some of them you need, but most you can do without.
Take charge and clean them out.

Some of the kinder and well written programs are configurable
and allow you to change the settings that starts them up. If
this option is available, then this is the best approach.

There are, however, many programs that do not give you the
choice and no matter how many times you remove them, they
return. Two that I find really annoying are the "Windows
Messenger" and the "Quicktime Task". Both sit in the system tray
and I don't need or want them there. I'll show you how to get
rid of them forever if you have Windows XP Pro or Windows 2000.
For those with Windows XP Home, this solution will not work.

First and foremost, however, I'd like to discuss a little gem of
a program called Startup Control Panel, written by a young chap
called Mike Lin from Boston. The program is available as
freeware from www.mlin.net and Mike takes donations from those
who want to contribute to his efforts.

This program works under all versions of Windows and is a vital
part of any Windows installation. It's a program that will allow
you to control exactly what programs load at system startup.
This is one of the first things I install after setting up a
computer with Windows. The program can either be loaded as a
standalone program or incorporated into your Control Panel. I
prefer the latter, but both work equally well.

When you invoke the program, there are a series of tabs across
the top. The 4 that you should be concerned about are labelled,
"Startup (user)", "Startup (common)", "HKLM/Run" and "HKCU/Run".
These represent 4 different methods by which your computer can
run programs when the system first starts. There are 3 other
tab, which are not as important and are self-explanatory anyway.
Note that the tabs may be on 2 levels depending on the windows
size. I usually drag the window and make it wider so that all
the tabs fit natly across on the page in a line.

Going through each of the 4 tabs, look at the checked items that
will run. To stop them from running, uncheck the box. If you are
unsure about a program, uncheck it and see what the effects are.
You can awlays revise this later if something stops working. As
an exercise, run the Windows Task Manager (by hitting the Ctrl,
Alt and Del keys simultaneously) and note down how much memory
is taken up by your system on a fresh start. The figure is
listed on the status bar of the Task Manager under "Mem Usage".
After unchecking all the unwanted programs, restart your system
and compare the number and see how much less memory is being
used. This is the amount you have saved and all things going
well, you'll notice that your system is snappier and definitely
less cluttered.

You will soon find that some programs do not like being
unchecked. Yes, you guessed it, the two that I mentioned above,
"Windows Messenger" and "Quicktime Task". They will reappear
everytime you delete them. Worry not for there is another way
for those running Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro on the NTFS
File System.

The NTFS File system comes with security built-in meaning that
access to files, folders and programs can be limited. This is
precisely the method which we will use to stop these pesky
programs from loading.

Open up a Windows Explorer window and navigate to where these
programs reside. For "Windows Messenger", it should be in your
"C:\Program Files\Messenger" folder and is called "msmsgs.exe".
Right click on the file and click on the "Security Tab". The
security settings will show. Basically you want to apply the
"Deny" access for all users and administrators. Do this by
selecting each group and then clicking on the "Deny" checkboxes.
When finished, click on the OK and you're done. The next time
you restart the system, this program will be denied access to
run. There are many who will rightly point out to me that there
is an easier way to do this and that is to run Windows
Messenger, navigate to the Tools menu and turn off the startup
option. I have done this in the past but find that when a
service pack or patch is loaded, that this program sometimes
notoriously starts up again, so the Deny option works
permanntly. Windows Messenger is a useless program and is
superseeded by the MSN Messenger program.

Repeat the same for the Quicktim Task program which you can find
by doing a search for "qttask.exe". You should find it in the
"C:\Program Files\Quicktime" folder.

You can deny access to any program that you don't want to run.
This is a powerful method of controlling your environment. It
can be reverted by unchecking the Deny boxes at any time.

For those running Windows XP Pro, by default the Security system
is disabled. This is easily fixed by opening up "My Computer"
and selecting "Tools, Folder Options, View". The item either
last on the list or close to last on the list will read
something like "Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended)". Uncheck
the box and click OK and your system will now have full security
settings on all file or folders. The properties window of any
file will then have the "Security" tab.

There is also the possibility that you have a Windows XP Pro
system running the FAT32 file system instead of NTFS. The FAT32
file system does not have the in-built security of NTFS and will
not allow you to allocate Deny permissions on files, folders or
programs. You can however, easily convert the FAT32 file system
to NTFS though using tools in XP. To find out how, do a Google
search for "convert FAT32 to NTFS".

I wish you all the best with your computing experiences.

About the author:
Balraj Dhaliwal is an Internet Consultant for BSD Domain
Registry, a well respected and liked domain and hosting provider
because of its no nonsense simple approach to getting things
done. Visit BSD Register at http://www.BSDRegister.com