The more programs running the slower your Windows computer will work.

To speed up your computer, stop programs from running that you do not need.

A lot of programs start automatically when Windows starts. The best way to stop these programs is to prevent them from starting by going into each program and selecting the option to not start the program when Windows starts.

In the system tray, in the lower right corner of your computer screen you can find some programs. Right or left click on each program, open that program's control panel or properties, and look for an option like (a) not start when Windows starts or (b) not put in System Tray.

Go to your Start menu in the lower left corner of your computer screen and run

services.msc

This will bring up a list of services installed on your computer. You can see which ones start automatically. Right click on those that you do not want to start, select Properties and set the program to start Manually or Disable.

Even though you set some programs to start Manually, some will start automatically, probably because some other process started them.

After turning off all these programs from starting automatically, reboot your computer.

Right click on the task bar at the bottom of your computer screen and select Task Manager.

You will see a list of Processes and Services that started. Look through these to find ones you do not need and try to stop them from starting using the above procedure.

If you still cannot find a way to stop a program from starting, you can use Windows Powershell to easily stop them.

Create a file and call it something like: stop-programs.ps1

The .ps1 makes the file a Powershell script.

For each process and service you see in the Task Manager, add a line in the Powershell script, like the following.

# -----------------------------
# This is a comment
# Stop processes and services
# -----------------------------
Stop-Process -Name DLBAmon        # Dell printer
Stop-Process -Name iTunesHelper  # iTunes
Stop-Service dlba_device                     # Dell printer
Stop-Service "iPod Service"                  # Use " or ' to include space

To run the Powershell script, right click on the script and select Run with Powershell.