msconfig

Use this hand-dandy program to mess up your computer. Click Start > Run, then type in msconfig. You can change which drivers and settings get run, what your autoexec.bat does (although you could just edit it yourself ), and also what programs run on startup. Very useful for Windows users.

This program can do a billion useful things for annoying MS OS users. Click Start > Run and then type in msconfig and hit enter.

1. You can change to selective startup and disable your startup items, which is useful for troubleshooting.

2. Click the Advanced button. Check Disable Scandisk After Bad Shutdown. Now when you get GPFs or BSODs, you won't have to press enter to make scandisk go away when you reboot!

3. Also under the Advanced button is an option to make the Windows Startup Menu automatticly appear when you start your computer, letting you select from Normal or Safe Mode (as opposed to having to hold F8 or Ctrl to make it come up).

4. Also under Advanced, you can specify how much memory you want the system to use. When my second block of 64MB of RAM went bad, I bumped this down to 64MB (I have two 64MB chips) so that I would stop getting General Protection Faults. Really nifty.

Windows 2000 does not have a 'msconfig' utility, but if you enjoyed this util, and have access to a Windows 98 system, you can use the Win98's version for editing startup items only in Windows 2000; it will work with anything else.

When you run the EXE, it will give you several error messages, just click 'OK' each time, and the program will run :)