Here's the deal: I have an HP laptop (dodges rotten fruit) that I got as a graduation present last year. Being poor as I am, I won't be able to get a proper gaming comp for at least another 1-2 years. So I use lappy with a 1 gig paging file and shutting down all non-essential system processes for graphic-intensive games (Halo, UT etc.)

Ideally, I would buy more RAM (shared video memory with 512mb doesn't cut it. Screw ATI mobility crapiness) and an external hard drive and dedicate most of my internal hard drive to virtual memory. I don't have that kind of money at the time being, but I may after a long summer of work.

Anyway, what I'm looking for is a free or relatively cheap program that will launch a dialog right after Windows login, before anything else starts up. This dialog would give me the option of booting up in user-defined modes: one with all normal processes started for everyday use; and one with only critical systems processes started, thus freeing up most of my RAM and paging file for games. I'm tired of manually shutting down every process I don't need every time I want to play a better game. Lappy McTopperson can handle the games, but not when a whole bunch of crap (msmsgs, ccApp (still don't know what that's for), spoolsv, Norton etc.) is running. Is there a program that will let me define how the system starts up and do everything I want?

Much obliged.

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Our very existence is at stake

Moving this to the technology forum.

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