Many people complain that their computer is too slow and it takes a long time to boot up. Startup programs are often the culprit. There are many hidden startup programs that are installed without the user’s knowledge - monitors and schedulers to name a few.
msconfig comes with Windows XP and does a minimal job of showing startup programs. We like autoruns by SysInternals. It is freeware and shows MUCH more than just startup programs: drivers, services, print monitors, browser helper objects…the list goes on. You can hide signed Microsoft entries so only 3rd party items show up. Autoruns makes it easy to disable/enable startup entries. This can also be the bane of autoruns.
Autoruns has a command line mode, too. And it runs on all versions of Windows; 95 on up.
Doug