Dr. Bob: Thanks for the suggestion. I knew somebody would probably critique my configuration list, so you've not disappointed!
I already use Sysinternals' AutoRuns to govern my startups, and "Startup Control Panel" would do much the same job, I think.
What have we here? Oh no! Eyes hazing over with red...anger...must destroy...cannot stop...nooooooo!...not that!...not a rant!...----- START OF RANT ------I have every good reason for using Force Kill, and PT has proven to be a boon and a time-saver for me. Even after being unticked in startup, some proggies spawn themselves and reset themselves afresh as a startup, when I inadvertently install them or even just allow them to update themselves.
Rather than have to untick them
time after time in AutoRuns, PT allows me to
"fire and forget" - just kill 'em by brute force if they ever surface as a process. I can clean up the startup lists at my leisure, then.
For example:(a) the persistent and annoyingly trojan-like AdobeCrap proggies when you update any Adobe product;
(b) the annoyingly trojan-like AskCrap proggies when you click "accept" by mistake when hurriedly installing some other proggy update that has the AskBar proggy concealed/bundled within it;
(c) the persistent and annoyingly trojan-like Micro$oft Messenger (which I rarely use, preferring to use Trillian for all my chat media), when a Windows Update runs.
CGuard, SeaPort, AdobeFlashCrap are all in the same category as the above.
I get PT to Force Kill the ImpulseCrap ones because they install with Fences (which I like a lot and always use). Unfortunately, Fences is set up so that it will not run unless Stardock Impulse is present and properly starts (presumably before it can issue an Error return). No amount of Autoruns tweaking or deleting of Stardock Impulse seems to alter this, so I let it start up and then PT kills it, and Fences then seems to load quite happily. I couldn't get this degree of control over Fences before I had PT, and was about to ditch Fences until I figured this trick out. (I have mentioned this in another thread elsewhere in the DC discussion forums.)
So you might now begin to see why I say that "...PT has proven to be a boon and a time-saver for me...".
I also always try to ensure that newly spawned instances of these annoying proggies are blocked by ZoneAlarm. They all try to "phone home" via some TCP/IP address or URL, but Zone Alarm won't let 'em without my say-so. I must have about 20 proggies blocked thusly in ZoneAlarm - including the above. That 20 includes, for example, about 9 AdobeCrap/FlashCrap proggies, and several Micro$oft ones (including Windows MediaPlayer, Windows Workflow Foundation, Microsoft Register Server).
All these petty annoyances can make my blood boil, but, thanks to PT (and ZoneAlarm), I can chillax bro' - well, most of the time anyway.
----- END OF RANT ------
