Recently, my computer has begun displaying a couple of error messages each time it starts up. This is pretty annoying, how can I stop it?

These messages can rise from a variety of reasons, from programs that haven’t been uninstalled correctly, to something that’s faulty all the way to some malicious program which is making it’s presence felt. My first suggestion would be to check that your antivirus is up to date and to make sure you’re not running any spyware.

Let’s examine the case where there’s a program running that shouldn’t be, (make sure you’re comfortable on your seat cushion and away we go!) maybe you thought you uninstalled it, or not longer need it to run on start up. To disable it, click Start followed by Run, type msconfig into the Run box and hit Enter. In the System Configuration Utility that appears, click the Startup tab and scroll through the list.

The Location column, incidentally, shows where on the hard disk it resides, which might help identify the responsible application.

To stop the offending file from launching with Windows, click to remove the tick alongside its entry and then click OK. You’ll be prompted to restart Windows in order for the changes to take effect – click the Restart button to do so.

Hope this helps!