Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

Which background programs should you close? ...........................

The answer: only the unnecessary ones. The problem: determining which

ones go and which ones stay. The solution: work cautiously and make notes

on what proves essential and what is demonstrably superfluous.

Among your goals are to find and remove adware, spyware, and other assorted

junk. You can also hunt for leftover pieces of programs you thought you had

uninstalled using proper removal utilities.

You can prune some of the programs that automatically load into the back-

ground each time you start your machine by going to the Startup submenu.

Click Start➪All Programs➪Startup; move your pointer into the list of pro-

grams and right-click to remove each one you no longer want to have loaded.

What you see here are not the programs themselves but shortcuts that cause

them to load; when you remove a program from the Startup menu you are not

uninstalling it from the hard drive, merely stopping its automatic load.

Some of the junk arrives in a more or less legitimate manner: When you install

a piece of software it may scatter all sorts of extra little features everywhere.

For example, a calendar program may install an alarm clock that runs in the

background, and a personal finance program may place an automatic reminder

to pay bills on a particular date. The best way to reduce the chances of such

junk being installed is to choose the custom installation option when you add

a program, and then carefully examine all of the options for features. You can

always add the feature later if you decide that it actually is of value to you.

Your laptop maker may have added utilities it considers useful, and you may

find junk: a utility to help connect to a broadband link or a troubleshooting

utility (generally a good thing), a direct link to its tech support system

(maybe helpful), or a direct link to its online store (probably less valuable).

Another source of junk are web sites offering free utilities or programs to

enhance your computing experience. Maybe yes or maybe no: If such an offer

pops up on my screen unsolicited, I always do one of two things — either

decline the offer or stop and research the program. A quick Internet search

should tell you if other users are using the program.

And then there are programs that you simply don’t want to see on your

machine, including adware, spyware, and viruses. If given a choice, just say

“No way.” Unfortunately, many of the pushers of this sort of junk don’t bother

to ask your permission.

Some web portals, including shopping pages and certain search engines,

sneakily install adware that pushes advertisements onto your system. Even

284 Part V: The Software Side of Life