Solutions

Overriding the Welcome screen and other startup programs

By JOHN TORRO
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 21, 2003

Q. When my computer starts, the Welcome to Windows 98 screen comes up. I have clicked on the check mark not to show it, yet it still comes up. I have to wait until it is fully on screen, then have to close it before I can do anything else. How do I get it not to come up? Also my Yahoo Messenger also comes up and I have to wait to shut it down. I don't want to get rid of it, but I don't want it to start every time I start my laptop.

A. I couldn't find anything explaining why the Welcome to Windows screen keeps appearing even after you specifically tell it that it has worn out its welcome. Try turning it off at the source: Click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, then click Welcome to Windows. Click the "Show this screen each time Windows 98 starts" check box to clear it, then close the dialog box.

See if Yahoo Messenger has an Options, Preference menu selection where you can tell it whether to initialize at startup. If you can't find it, click Start, Run. Type in MSINFO32 and click OK. From the menu bar, select Tools, System Configuration Utility. From here you can selectively turn off the different areas within Windows from which programs run at startup. You'll see a tab for each area: Config.sys, Autoexec.Bat, System.ini, Win.ini (expand the Windows option and check the Load and Run lines) and Startup (this contains the programs that start from within the registry). The programs you disable from starting at bootup will remain listed in case you decide that you need to turn it back on. Look for the Yahoo Messenger application and click it off.

More RAM, more speed

Q. I have 64 megabytes of random access memory on my Gateway P5-133. It seems okay until I loaded Acrobat and WinZip. Now it seems to take a long time to load. Is the Acrobat just a big program and slows it down? Is WinZip slowing it down, too? Would a Pentium III or 4 help since all I do is look at my portfolio, eBbay, genealogy and e-mail?

A. A P5 is definitely dated, but I'm a firm believer in "if it works, don't fix it." If the PC is serving your needs, there is no reason to spend money on a new one. The 64MB RAM is pretty skimpy, though. After loading Windows and only Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, most of that 64 MB will be taken up, and from there on you will be paging to disk for anything else you do.

Doubling your memory shouldn't cost more than $40 and you will see a marked improvement. When you remove one bottleneck (in your case, memory), your speed will be limited by the next bottleneck, which for you will most likely be your P5 processor. But according to the applications you say you run, this won't be as limiting as the memory shortage is.

QuickTime annoyance

Q. I installed software for a digital camera, including QuickTime. During the download, a message appeared saying a newer version of QuickTime was found. I selected "No" when asked if I wanted to overwrite it. Now whenever my computer starts I get this message, with various numbers and letters preceding it: "7C8:qttask.exe- No Disk found in drive\device\harddisk\2\dr4." I click the X in the window and the startup continues. What do I need to do to eliminate this annoyance? I am using Windows XP Home edition.

A. QuickTime is quickly moving to the top of my annoyances list. If I didn't need it to view particular content, I would never load it on my system.

QuickTime places QTask.exe in your startup folder or registry start area. You don't need it to run QuickTime. You can click the Qtask icon in your task bar and uncheck the Run at startup option, but somehow it always seems to find its way back. I finally deleted the QTask.exe file from my system.

Click Start, Run, type MSCONFIG and click OK. Click the System Configuration Tool and click each tab looking for Qtask.exe. It likely will be under the Startup tab. Uncheck the box next to Qtask to keep it from starting. But, as I said, sometimes it mysteriously finds its way back on. If this was a Microsoft program instead of an Apple program, they probably would be calling for a Senate investigation.

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