My computer running Windows XP Home Edition has at least 30 programs running in the background. I can shutdown about half of these processes manually, using the Task Manager. However, the next time Windows boots all the processes are back. A lot of work and angst for no reward! How can I permanently stop these programs from running?

It is normal to see quite a few processes running when you look in the Windows XP Task Manager. Most of these processes are not running under your user name, but are running under the SYSTEM user. You can tell which user a process is running under, by looking at the ‘User Name’ column for that process. If you cannot see this column, go to the ‘View’ menu > ‘Select Columns’ and tick ‘User Name’ then click OK. You shouldn’t try to shutdown any processes apart from ones which are running under your user name, as processes running under SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, NETWORK SERVICE, etc’¦ are generally important system-related processes which are required for Windows to function. I find a handy way to view the processes is to click the ‘User Name’ column heading, which will sort the processes by user name.

As you have discovered, killing a running process will only close it for the current Windows session. Next time you start Windows, the process will automatically start. To stop the process from loading at startup, you will need to remove this program from the ‘Run’ key in the registry (which specifies which programs load at startup). However, Windows comes with a handy utility which makes life much easier, by allowing the removal of startup items without editing the Windows registry. Go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘msconfig’ (without the quotes) then click OK. In the window that appears, click the ‘Startup’ tab. Find the item(s) you would like to disable from startup, and remove the tick next to the entry. Click OK. Next time you start windows, the process will not load. However, you may receive a message that Windows is running in selective startup mode. This is just warning you that you have disabled some items from starting when Windows loads. If this message appears, tick the box not to display the message in future and click OK to close the window.