Dear CNET members,

Happy Friday! First a pat on the back for all the members who contributed to Mary R.'s question a few weeks ago, about her hesitation to download Windows Vista SP1. She e-mailed me directly, saying thank you to all who helped. She also shared her experience using your advice and recommendations. She posted some tips she learned along the way and shares it in her note, so please read it. Thank you, Mary, for your e-mail to let us know how things worked out; we appreciate it! Again, without your contributions, this newsletter wouldn't be possible. You folks rock! Now let's move on to this week's topic on how to disable those unnecessary programs running in your PC's background.

I think this is one of the most-asked questions that I receive from folks each week and I'm glad it is being addressed with Kate's question. Many people are familiar with the whole process of stopping programs and there are several ways to tackle this task. From reading the answers, by far the most popular answer is using Windows msconfig to stop programs from loading during start-up, and while this is a fairly simple task given the instruction from our members, many users don't exactly know what programs (beside the obvious ones, of course) are the ones to disable. That seems to be where the confusion lies for people using this method. So as some folks pointed out, if you are unfamiliar with the start-up item, leave it alone or do an Internet search on the item and see exactly what it is for. Most certainly you'll find an answer this way, so you'll know if the program is needed or if you can safely disable it.

In addition to the msconfig suggestions, there are also many members who recommend certain software that they use to disable programs in the background. While those are great suggestions, I believe the best way to go about accomplishing the task is learning it without having to rely on any third-party app to do it. This way you can understand your system better and get the satisfaction of knowing you accomplished it all on your own. There are many great answers this week, including ones that do not have to do with programs running in your background but are general good practices to your system running lean and clean, so read through them all. I have a few featured member answers to get you started in the Q&A section. Thanks for everyone's time and effort in helping one another out! Have a great weekend!

Cheers!
- Lee

Got suggestions? Send me an e-mail: messageboards@cnet.com

Featured member solutions
for last week's question:

 "Pulling it all together. "
-- Submitted by: MarkFlax

 "Killing programs that start automatically to improve speed "
-- Submitted by: Watzman

 "General information on shutting down processes"
-- Submitted by: TarekOkail

 Read all member contributions

 Thanks to all who contributed!