Dear Curlyben,
You wrote that one can close programs not used so they don't take up so much space on the Start-Up.. Is that what I think? You mean, Adobe, Acrobat, QuickTime, etc. can actually be closed and free space-but will stay there if needed later? Umm, will you pretend I'm 10 years old and explain that to me? Pretty Please? (I'm SO excited!)

OK what I was talking about was stopping some programs load up on startup.
This will free up system resources, but not drive space.
If you fire up CCleaner and then go to Tools then Startup and give us a list of these programs (Just the program name would be enough don't worry about all the other techie stuff) then we'll advise what is really needed on startup and what you can stop loading with windows.