Free Startup Managers

Have you installed so many programs that you can't restart your computer without waiting forever for them all to start? Do you have a program that you have to manually start each and every time you reboot your computer? If either of these sounds overly familiar to you, then a Startup Manager will make your life a lot easier.

A Startup Manager is an application that is used to regulate what programs will start when your computer parts, and what programs will not start. There are many situations where this would be useful. For example, if you installed a program, or numerous programs, that are all trying to start when you start your computer, you can use a Startup Manager to stop those programs from trying to automatically start. On the flip side, you may have a program that you'd like to start whenever your computer restarts. In this case, you would use the Startup Manager accomplish this.

While Startup Managers can be very useful, they are powerful took that also come with very serious risks:

1. Some Startup Managers also allow you to load or not load device drivers. While this can be a useful diagnostic tool, it can also prevent your hardware from operating correctly.
2. Some Startup Managers allow you to directly edit the boot configuration files for your operating system. This too is a very powerful tool, but can very easily cause your computer to not boot at all if done wrong. This type of feature is for advanced end-users only.
3. Automatic scanning Startup Managers will scan all programs that are set to start when your computer restarts. This is a feature that should not be used if it can be avoided. There are often false positives with these scans, which can cause startup errors on your system.

You can get any or all of the free Startup Managers here

NOTE 1: Most free startup manager products are not as comprehensive as you may need. To get the full range of startup manager protection, you may need to buy a full featured commercial startup manager product.