Freeing up resources for smoother Graphics

[cc3101]

My system performance when looking in "my computer-performance" is usually around 70-78% and sometimes as low as 42%. I've tried closing some things in my startup menu but I'm afraid I'll be deleting them from the system.
My toolbar on the bottom of the screen often has repeated applications, (I.e. windows media player, or RealPlayer, or Quicktime player) or some that I vary rarely use.

When running Myst (not terribly performance hungry I wouldn't think) I went to a troubleshooting menu. There's a "startup folder" button, and a "Win.ini File".Doing a little exploring here will sometimes get my system resources up but nothing drastic or more importantly, permanent.

Finally,
Question are-
How can I clean up my desktop, start up menu and task/toolbar without losing any programs or screwing up some applications.
When I go to the startup settings, and want to remove a program from the startup like (MSN messenger-which I don't use) it asks if I want to send the program to the "trash". Will it be erased from the program files completely (after I dump the trash of course)
Do I need system resources to be around 90% when games are running?
Hardware/software
P3-20gb
Video card=32MVNVIDIA GeForce2MX w/tv-out
Ram=256
Windows Me
Intelli-mouse "PS/2 Port Mouse"

ignorantly yours
Chris Allan

[mike breck]

Hi cc3101,

You don't need to delete anything from the Start Menu as you will see.

The truth of the matter is you don't need any programs running in the background apart from "Explorer" and "Systray".

To find out all the programs that are running when you start Windows, press "Ctrl+Alt+Del". You can manually close everything apart by highlighting it and pressing "Endtask". This will close the program until you restart Windows again or alternatively you can restart individual programs thro the "Start Menu".

As I said, close everything apart from Explorer (which is Windows) and Systray (which is the little box on the right-hand side of the Taskbar which shows you some of the programs that are running - but not all).

To save you manually closing all the programs each time you can disable and enable startup programs from "msconfig". In the Start Menu>Run type "msconfig".
Go to the "Startup tab" and uncheck everthing apart from Systray. When you next reboot, these programs will not run when Windows starts thus freeing up resources. If you wish to enable a program to start with Windows, then put a check at it again.

Using this method you can just start any program like RealPlayer or even your Virus scanner when YOU need it instead of letting them use up resources when they are not needed.

Finally you don't need 90% free resources to play even the most intensive game. But by having as much free as possible and not running programs in the background, you will acheive better performance. Reboot the PC before you start playing your game, and that free up the memory that Windows and other programs have acquired during your last session.

HTH