There are a couple of other tools to consider using here.

I love Mike Lin's little program called Startup Control Panel. Find it at http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml. It literally sets up in your control panel. Open Control Panel and look for the Startup computer icon.

Poke around in there and see what has pushed to the front of the line when you boot up your computer. I don't like waiting for all sorts of programs to load, especially if I don't use them often. Yet Adobe, Real, Nero, and lots of other programs can and will try to put a quick launch icon in place. If you are running WinPatrol and make any changes, when you uncheck a box telling these programs NOT to load WinPatrol will pop up and ask if you want to make the registry change. The answer is Yes. Lots of stuff in that quick launch lineup means the computer starts slower. You'll see the path name for these programs and many include WINDOWS system32 locations.

If you poke around in this program you'll want to know what you're looking at. DON'T JUST DELETE STUFF! I really like the site called BleepingComputer.com for finding out just what all of these little files are for. If you simply uncheck an item, it won't load. If you uncheck it and you later let it put itself back in the quick launch menu, then it will appear twice in Control Panel startup, one instance checked, one unchecked. You'll have to delete one instance of it before you can uncheck it again.

SRS