For an easy way to get your hands on a definitive list of all the software that is configured to launch automatically with Windows, you may want to think about using an alternative start-up management program.

NitroBoot is a handy program that simply provides you with a list of all the programs launched during Windows start-up and gives you the opportunity to inactivate them at start-up or change their start-up settings. You can delay certain programs from starting up at the same time as Windows and opt to have the operating system ask you whether you want specific non-essential programs to launch each time it starts up.

NitroBoot is free to try out for 30 days. After the trial period has elapsed you'll have to pay to continue using it.

For a step-by-step guide to using NitroBoot, refer to the mini-Workshop in the 'Speed up your PC's start-up' feature in issue 177 of Computeractive.