How to use MSCONFIG: NetSquirrel.com. Built into Windows is a special tool called the "Microsoft System Configuration Utility" or simply "MSCONFIG.
" Designed to help you troubleshoot problems with your computer, MSCONFIG can also be used to ensure that your computer boots faster and crashes less. Most people know that the more programs you have running on your computer at once, the more likely it is that your computer will either run slowly or even crash. System Startup Configuration Guide. Even though Microsoft do their best to lower the boot time with each successive release of the Windows OS, after a while things will tend to slow down a bit as more applications get set to load at start-up unnecessarily, whether you wanted them to or not.
This guide will take you through configuring Windows 9x, Me, 2000 & XP to load as quickly as possible & also have the benefit of loading with more memory available for use. Since most of the more recent versions of Microsoft Windows are covered on this article, we recommend Win9x and ME users to keep reading, while Win2k and XP users will want to skip some of the info that follows and go directly here, where their OSes are covered.
The third part of the article covers general/miscellaneous settings that should work for all of the OSes aforementioned. The first place to look for items being loaded is the Start Menu, this goes for all Operating Systems. Click on Start, Programs then the Startup folder. MSconfig from WinXP.