Question

Can you tell me what programs are set to run at startup and what ones can be disabled to allow computer to run faster?

Answer

Unfortunately this can all depend on your computers setup and what is installed. However, what you can do is run msconfig click the startup tab and see everything that is loading at startup in addition to the required windows startup files. Anything listed in this startup tab can be disabled safely.

Additional information about viewing programs running in the background and disabling them from starting up automatically can be found on the below link.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chtsr.htm