Q: i was buying a new computer and theres so much CRAP on it. it has 5 gigs of RAM but 2 gigs are being used right now by the useless crap that comes pre-installed onto the computer. so my question is: is it worth it paying $40 to get the computer optimized or is there a way i can do it myself for free?
A: You can manually do it using Microsoft's msconfig. Hit start, and go to run (in Vista, just search msconfig). In the text field, type "msconfig" without the quotation marks. Now you can go into the "Services" and "Startup" tab and uncheck what you do not want to automatically start. If they do not automatically start they will not occupy your RAM, but only your hard-drive space. Also, make sure to check "Hide all Microsoft Services" as you do not want anything to be wrong.