I have a Dell Inspiron 9300 with Windows XP. When I first got it it would start up quickly. Now it seems to take a lot longer and I feel it is because it is opening a lot of things that I don't need to have running in the background while I am on the internet etc.

1) How do I get rid of selected items in the system tray (lower righthand corner) when it boots up. I don't want to screw anything up in the process. Ex. Dell Support, Coral Photo, Kodak, Adobe Photo downloader etc.

2) When these Icons are shown in the system tray doesn't it mean that they where opended up at startup and they take up space in the memory?

3) Does it affect the system speed?

Download Autoruns.exe from this link:

Autoruns for Windows (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx)

Unpack it into a convenient directory and launch Autoruns.exe. When it starts up, click on the "Logon" tab. Don't touch anything in these three areas:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\Wds\rdpwd\StartupPrograms

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell

Most of the programs in the other areas are subject to scrutiny (at least). If you aren't sure what the program is or does, right-click on it and select "Search Online" (or select it and click <CTRL><M>) and your default search engine will look it up. You can then determine what it is.

It seems that every program writer is absolutely sure that everyone would want a quick-start icon in the tray. As you found, these things take a while to get started and you don't need most of them. If you have a problem, simply restart Autoruns and recheck the box and reboot. This will reinstall its default behavior. You'll want your antivirus and possibly a personal firewall to run all of the time.

Check this link, there are 2 good useful posts here that will help with system speed - Posts 3 and 5 will help out with what you are looking to do
https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/computers-beginners/frequently-ask-questions-about-computers-233870.html