Minimum No. of Programs Running in the Background?

[Tone Deaf]

In trying to create a CD of music from various files, I find that they appear to be ?taking,? but when I try to call them up from the Playlist, about half of them give an error message that the file is either non-existent or corrupted. After trying with various CD-making programs to no avail, I feel that the problem must be that I have too many programs running in the background. Using Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see a long, long list. Some are obvious for removal. Some, I don?t know about.

Does anyone know where I can find a list of programs that MUST stay active?

I?ve tried Search and Help, but I might not be using the right word(s) to get an answer.

[Dan McDonald]

Tone -
If you click on Run then type msconfig it should bring up a box that has various tabs. Go to the startup tab and it will list all the services and programs that startup when you boot the computer. Most of those can be turned off. I generally leave everything by Microsoft on (unless it's word or something like that), and turn off almost everything else. It makes a big difference. Plus, if you do it as a small group of 3 or so at a time and reboot afterwards, you can make sure it's ok each time you reboot.

If you think something may not be needed, you can type in the name of the program in an internet search engine and there are quite a few websites that tell you what a particular program or service does.
That's the way I do it, anyway.

Dan

[Tone Deaf]

Thanks, Dan,

I'm getting on it right now.

T D

[Craig Maier]

Just a warning on this one; make sure that you know what you are turning off. If you turn off the wrong things, you could get into a real bind. Do not blindly turn things off.