[b]Disable unused devices to free resources[/b] While this may seem like stretching it a bit, it is possible to free up resources by removing or disabling devices under Device Manager. Some of these unused devices may include, floppy drives, serial ports, USB, Firewire and parallel ports, or onboard audio devices. In most cases you can disable these in system BIOS, but here we'll remove them from the Manager. The increase in speed can be great while in other cases barely noticeable. Now I wouldn't go too crazy with this, but it's worth a try especially if you have an unused Network card (NIC) or modem enabled. Right-click My Computer, then Properties, then click the Hardware tab, then click Device Manager. The list of devices installed is displayed. In this example I'll disable my internal modem. Expand the tree to expose the device. In this case I double-click Modems (or click the +). Right-click the device and choose Disable: [img]http://tweak.us/modemdisable.gif[/img] You'll be prompted if you want to disable the device, choose OK. The screen refreshes and shows: [img]http://tweak.us/modemdisable2.gif[/img] [i]Just reboot and see how it goes. You can do this with as many devices that you've condemned as unnecessary. If all is ok, congrats on reducing your startup time and freeing up a bit of resources. To undo what we've done here, just reverse the procedure and choose Enable.[/i]