How to determine if a program in startup category can be safely disabled/deleted


It is not easy to know what a program does based on its name and if it is safe to delete/disable it from loading at startup. Some programs are vital for system or its performance, so deleting/disabling them may cause Windows to fail starting up.

Here are two tricks, however. You need to double-click on the program or by right click mouse on the program and select 'Properties' menu item in StartUp Organizer. And then select the File info tab.

- Try to see the file date/time. If it is the same as the most of Windows files, it means that the file is a standard Windows component, not a third party tool. In this case I would not play with it. If it is a 3rd party, in most cases it could be safely deleted/disabled to test.

- The tab will also give you some details about its manufacturer and a description. Probably this may shed light on what the program is.