Disable programs from running at startup

That’s right. We’re not talking about the task manager anymore. In Vista, there is a different way to find out what kinds of software run at start-up, and what kinds of software is running at the moment. Although this feature is similar to viewing the processes tab in Task Manager, please do not confuse the Software Explorer with it, because they are not the same. This is a good tool to know more about the software that is running on your PC. But the task manager is still the ultimate tool since it displays every single process running on your PC, whereas, but please remember the Software Explorer only displays processes recognized as pieces of software.

Below, you are only able to view the process name and a short description. Often times, the description and names are so vague, you are unable to tell what the program is.

Luckily, Vista has a feature that displays much more:

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Change default OS at boot up

By default, Windows Vista is the OS you will boot up in if you decide not to push anything at the boot-selection screen. However, this setting is changeable for those who would much rather have their earlier version of Windows become the default OS. You might be wondering why someone would want to do that? For instance, my brother is a very hardcore gamer but unfortunately, there is no driver support for my video card on Vista. Because he uses this computer more often than I do, the default OS on this particular PC is set to XP.

Now, let’s modify the default OS to start at bootup. First, go to Start Menu, right click on my computer, and choose properties.

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