I have Win. 98 on both the laptop and home systems.  Both are early Pentiums (266 and 333 respectively) but have approx 100megs of RAM.  

When I hit "Ctrl-Alt-Del", there are a huge # of programs listed.  I'm sure this is where the slowdown comes from on my systems.  

What programs have to stay running (both are Win 98 Systems)?

How to prevent the others from loading at startup?

Thanks!!

AFARR

Technically only two things have to run: explorer and systray.  There are others that probably should run though.  Whenever I am not sure about a program I write down the file name and do a search on my HD to see what folder it is in because that then gives me an idea of what the program is.  Or I do a search on the net to see if I can get an idea of what the program is doing and wether or not I want it to run.  Once you figure out which ones you want you can go to Run and type msconfig.  This will bring up a screen with several tabs and options.  I think if you go to the advanced tab there is a list of startup items which lists everything that loads.  You can then select the items that you do not want to start.  Try this first and if everything works well with the reduced startup items then you may want to think about going to the control panel and uninstalling the programs.  This is what I do when I have to debug somebody elses machine.

Start/Run/msconfig is the easiest and most efficient method for controlling the stuff that is loadin on startup.  You will find entries here from the Startup Group, the Registry, and the Win.ini and System.ini files (holdovers for Win3x software compatibility).

Good luck!

start/run

then type msconfig

Here's a site that lists [url=www.c-ray.net/starters.htm]startup executables[/url] with explanations and if they're required or not.

Very good info for those of us without a techno-clue.  Thanks.