Page 824 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Tip

For techies, Windows includes an even more technical list of the goings-on on your PC: the Event
Viewer. You can find it by searching for its name. Enjoy looking over eye-glazing lists of every
log Windows keeps—lists of happenings concerning programs, setup, security, services, and more.
You can sort, filter, and group these events. But if you can understand the significance of these
obscure messages, you shouldn’t be reading a Windows book—you should be writing one.

Reliability Monitor

If you prefer to get the bad news in visual form, try the Reliability Monitor
(Figure 15-5, bottom). To see it, type reliability into the search box. Click
“View reliability history.”

Startup Items Revealed

Just say the words “startup items” to a Windows veteran, and you’re sure to
witness an involuntary shudder.

Startup items are programs that load automatically when you turn the

computer on, without your invitation. Some are icons in the system tray.
Some are designed to assist antivirus or iPod syncing apps. Some run in the
background, invisibly.

But all of them use memory, and sometimes they can slow down your
machine. And in older Windows versions, they were annoying and complex
to manage.

Now, sometimes, there are on/off switches for the startup items in the
programs themselves, in menus called Settings, Preferences, Options, or
Tools. That’s a clean, direct way to shut something up, but it won’t help you

with invisible startup items—those you didn’t even know were running.

In Windows 10, the Task Manager has a tab called Startup Items. It’s a
startup/shutdowner’s dream come true.