Questions about disabling a few startup items.

[Matt_Smi]

I like to keep applications that run at startup (as seen though msconfig) to a minimum. I have two that I am wondering about (if it is safe to disable them). They are Point32 and MUPS. Point32 is for my Microsoft mouse and sysinfo.com says this “Microsoft Intellipoint software for their Intellimouse series of mice - required if you use non-standard Windows driver features” what are non-standard window driver features? I did use the software that came with the mouse to change the functions of a few of the buttons, from example the “forward” button to “show/hide desktop”.

MUPS is for my Belkin UPS and sysinfo.com says this “Launches the Belkin Bulldog Plus Service - required if you want to access the UPS advanced functions” from what I can see this places the Belkin monitor software (which can be accessed via that start menu) in the system tray and enables an un-needed shortcut to it. But I am not sure if it needs to be in the system tray to control the shutdown of my computer during a power outage, but I am pretty sure that is what upsd.exe is for which according to awnsersthatwork.com… “This service is essential if you want a record kept of all UPS events and alerts and if you want your PC to auto shut down in case of prolonged power cuts – Leave alone.” I suppose I could always use Hijack this to disable these and then restore them if I later find out that I need them. Thanks for any info about this.

[autotran]

I would download and use the Freeware program WinPatrol http://www.winpatrol.com/ to disable any programs you do not want to run at startup. You can always add them back in again if they are required.

[Matt_Smi]

For anyone wondering about this I tried disabling point32 (Hijack this backed it up), without point32 running I could not use my customized buttons, nor could I use the horizontal scrolling feature. So I set that back to run at startup again. I have not tried disabling MUPS yet but I will soon and post back just in case anyone ever searches for this. I am down to only 4 startup items!