Windoze XP - What & How to turn off unneeded startup

[johnm]

Folks -

Sometimes the dark forces of CNC/Bill Gates/Random Error align, and unfortunately, this often forms as a "Perfect Storm" centered on a one-off, tight deadline, spendy material mounted ever so carefully on our spoilboard.

Frank and Scott at SB have said that we need to turn off as much of the automatic start up items as we can. We've killed the auto software updates and things like that. When I go into the startup menu and unselect things that I know we are not using, on restart it goes into "selective mode" and won't let me keep them turned off. WTF? How and what can I kill in XP, so that the machine only starts with the minimum needed number of programs and stays that way? Also, I cannot tell from some of the file names, exactly WHAT the program is, or what it does. I don't want to deselect anything that I shouldn't, but the system sure doesn't need any of my help to crash.

In addition, currently, no pun intended, we *may* also be fighting a grounding issue - or something else, or not. We have gotten data loss errors, and been able to recover, but it gives us fits.

I've checked the cables, everything *looks* okay. Is there a way to test for a voltage drop across the USB cable ground to the control box ground to earth ground? If so, how, and how much?
I have a background in radio and was very careful to ground things six ways from Sunday - I know that grounding faults can cause mysterioso troubles...

Any takers? Will a PRT Alpha run SB in DOS?

Thanks!

John Moorhead

[andyb]

John,
If you are going into the System Configuration Utility and de-selecting the programs that way, you may be causing your own problem. I'm running XP Home on the system running my bot and have not had any problems. Is this a dedicated PC or do you use it for other things? What software besides SB and/or Parts Wizard are you running on the system? If you don't have any additional programs installed on your PC then there is no reason to be going into the System Configuration Utility. The utility should only be used for troubleshooting. To remove programs use the Add/Remove in the Control Panel.

One other thought. Is this a name brand PC? Dell, Gateway, etc... If so, than you may need to remove all of the software they install. Dell for an example installs several small utilities that can be removed.

Andy B.

[knight_toolworks]

To disable a startup program by using the System Configuration Utility

1.