This is gonna be long and whiney and I apologize in advance. 1st off--I am NOT a techie, never have been, do not want to be. Forced into upgrading to 8.1 last year when XP support ended. I bought a wonderful, powerful Acer Aspire Z3-605
all in one desktop with a giant hard drive and a fast processor. The system came loaded with windows 8.0 [loaded at the factory in June 2013] -- I received it in Dec 2013. The instuctions for set up told me to immediately upgrade the OS to 8.1.
Think 8.1 had been released in early Nov 2013. So, non-techie that I am--I did that, reinstalled all my files,, etc...I have an ISP offering DSL and the speed was barely dial-up. What I discovered after messing with it for several weeks--I should
have downloaded all the missing 8.0 MS updates from the June 2013 install]. I had to reset the computer and start all over; I chose to NOT upgrade to 8.1 as the 8.0 installation with all the MS updates was working well, speedy, reliable, etc. I
set my update status to automatic and all was well--until Sept 2014 when that whole fiasco about the problems with the updates caused me to lose access to about half my apps. I researched this on support forums and was told that I needed to go to 8.1--whole
bunch of technical reasons which sounded reasonable.
Well, it is Dec 2013 all over again--the computer is really slow. I use Avast antivirus, and check the system activity for updates of programs, etc--the problem is NOT a virus or malware--it is just slow. I am pretty sure it is all that start-up
"stuff". So here is my question--what can I disable to make the system ignore all that start up rigamarole--I am not a gamer, have only a few peripheral programs [foxit pdf, familytreemaker, mozy.com [offsite backup]] so I do not need anything
started up to provide access to games. I will say the setup worked very well with the 8.0 setup so I feel confident I there is not something in my installed programs that is causing the slowdown. I use Firefox as my primary browser [always have]
but IE is activated by familytreemaker and maybe other programs I am aware of. Is there a list of programs that can safely be disabled--I think 8.1 must come with everything enabled at startup. I guess I can copy the name of each program enabled
and look them up to see what they do but I would rather not take the time it would take.
To say I am frustrated with this operating system is putting it mildly. I realize I am not the only person who feels this way but it seems like something could be done to help the average user. Or maybe I am not the average user--I felt like
I knew what I was doing with XP and rarely had a problem with it in all the years I used it. Sorry for the rant
In summary--what can I safely disable to get this puppy out of the bed and running???