Disabling Win.ini startup items

[bagelred]

I'm trying to make my Windows XP system as efficient as possible. I see that WIN.INI in the system conf. utility has many items that startup automatically.

I disabled an aol function and system runs a little faster. What else in WIN.INI is safe to disable? Are these crucial items that need to start or could I disable them?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'll attach a screenshot (if this works).

 

[KSoD]

I wouldnt disable anything else. Maybe hte 16 Biut support can go as most stuff now a days runs at least 32 but if you run across something that is 16 Bit it wont run. The rest are needed.

Fonts is the text. If you disable it you will only see icons and that doesnt help on the web. Extensions if you disable that you disable Windows basically. As everythign has a extension. It continues on that way.

You are better off under the Services tab. Check the Box to hide Windows Services and remove more from there. Same with the Startup tab. Almost everything under the win.ini tab needs to be there.

 

[bagelred]

Interesting. Looked up Win.ini in wikipedia. Here's part of entry:

"WIN.INI is a basic INI file that was used in versions of the Microsoft Windows operating environment up to Windows 3.11 to store basic settings at boot time. By default, all font, communications drivers, wallpaper, screen saver, and language settings were stored in WIN.INI by Windows 3.x. Many of these settings were honored in Windows 9x, although the files had begun to be phased out in favor of the Windows registry. Windows XP still acknowledges some entries in the WIN.INI file, to provide backwards compatibility with older 16-bit applications. However, when a fresh install of XP is performed, the WIN.INI file created is initially blank. Also there is a WIN.INI file in Windows Vista."


It makes it seem win.ini is not needed in windows xp and later, doesn't it?

 

[KSoD]

Not really. Read the last line. It is blank when you freshly install XP. So why is it that entries are added? That is because some of the apps installed still depend on the file. So removing them will adversly affect these apps.

So if you wish you can try it. But i am willing to bet that a few apps will not respond the way you expect when you try and run them.