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Satsuko,
I guess I mis-stated my question above and now that others have also joined in ... and Sherri has mentioned a freeware program ... I should restate my question. Also, David has mentioned a removal tool for Norton because that sorry program leaves all kinds of junk when uninstalled in the normal manner ... as does any other Symantec program.
And to All,
What I wanted to know is what programs other than avast are running in the taskbar. Many of you have stated that you only have one or 2 programs running. This seems unrealistic to me.
In addition to the program Sherri mentioned, you can also try the free
What's Running ...
www.whatsrunning.net/ ... which will give you an idea of what programs, processes, etc are running on your computer. I suppose the one Sherri mentions does similar things. With What's Running, the last tab on the right ... Startup ... has 26 items listed that startup when my computer is booted and there are 12 icons in the task tray. The amount of Drivers, Modules, etc are much higher.
While I am not trying to say that in any way the recent update to avast is not a contributing factor, what I am trying to suggest is that perhaps there is more going on at the start-up on all of your computers than some of you might realize. With the recent update of avast, maybe some of these computers are beginning to get close to running low on resources. I am an "applications junkie" and sometimes on my old computer, I tend to get it "a little heavy" on startup items. This new computer has not a problem in that area though if I do get a certain amount of stuff running at startup, I will notice a little slowdown in startup time.
Actually, even on the old computer, I do not notice a difference in startup time with the most recent avast update. The old computer is an AMD 750 Duron with 512 mb RAM. This new one is in my signature below. Oh, and some of you are probably running services you do not need. This takes up CPU cycles and memory which slows down your computer.
Remember, I do not know how computer savvy any of you are so please forgive me if I step on a toe or 2. It is not intentional. And, of course, I may have missed a thing or 2.
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