Startup Items

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Pezzy

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Hi all.

I wasn't really sure if I should put this in the "Hardware" part of the forum or not, but, it does involve hardware items integrated to the motherboard, so, yes, I suppose it could be said it is hardware related.

To give a little background first: I've had this new-build of a system for roughly two months, but, about one month ago, I ran into a problem that I couldn't get my head around or fix with my 10+ years of experience. So, I took it in to be fixed (ever heard of Fry's Electronics?). It involved getting caught in a "loop" when trying to install the XP Pro operating system on the HDD while booting from the CD drive.

I had to give the techs my installation CD for my Gigabyte motherboard so they could install the chipset drivers, etc.

However........

In addition to my anti-virus & firewall, I use a little program you may have heard of to check on viruses and spyware called "HiJackThis". You can also use it to remove items from starting up at boot-time like you would using "msconfig/ Startup tab".

Well, I noticed some items reported in the HiJackThis log that I don't think are essential to running my computer, and I think I know how they got there. The techs at Fry's Electronics? When I gave them my motherboard CD, I think they just installed everything that was on there, regardless of whether it was really going to be needed or not. Here are some of the items I discovered in HiJackThis that are running at boot-time:

C:\WINDOWS\RaidTool\xInsIDE.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\xRaidSetup.exe boot
C:\Program Files\Gigabyte\ET5Pro\ETcall.exe

I of course have heard of the word "Raid" before; a raid "array", a raid "setup", etc. However, I've never used a raid setup, nor do I really know in detail what they are. My hard drive is a Western Digital 320GB SATA drive.

Do SATA drives have anything to do with raids? I have only the one hard drive hooked into my motherboard (no other hard drives, just a DVD ROM drive). Or am I perhaps wrong and I do need these raid devices running at startup? Or if not, can I safely remove them from starting at boot-time?

The other item listed above (ET5Pro\ ETcall.exe) is a tuning device for Gigabyte motherboards to help you tweak and overclock if you want. But do I really need it starting during boot?

And these items in the HiJackThis log:

RTHDCPL.EXE
SOUNDMAN.EXE
ALCWZRD.EXE
ALCMTR.EXE

I believe all of these items have to do with the motherboard's on-board sound card from RealTek. But do they all really have to be there during system boot-time?

And how about this item:

C:\Program Files\ATI\Catalyst Media Center\CMCService.exe

I have a television tuner card in a "mini" PCI-E slot. But does this item really need to be there at boot-time?

With all of the items I have listed, I have gone into the user interface of each of these programs and looked at the Options/ Preferences to see if I could disable it that way, but no, that choice/ option is not there. Sometimes with some programs you can do this, or, other times, during the installation process, you're given the option of having the item/ service running during startup or running in the background. I usually de-select this. But I don't believe these choices were available for the items I've listed above.

Please let me know what you think (especially with those "Raid" items).

Can I safely remove these items using HiJackThis and still have my system run normally? With those on-board RealTek sound items, I don't want to lose my audio!!! :happy:

Thanks for any input or suggestions.
Pez
 
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