The complaint has been that Mom's computer is hard to start up and shut down. Part of this could be from security software. We have removed all the random stuff and tried to limit ourselves to Microsoft Security Essentials. It has a little icon down in the tray, and said we could be vulnerable, so I am manually running a full scan now. (This scan finished in about 4 hours, with nothing found.)
In addition, I looked for remnants of the old programs and found directories for AVG, Search and Destroy, and Spyware Blaster, in C:/Program Files. They were mostly empty, since Bill had uninstalled these, but I removed the complete directories just to be sure.
Also there were comments about AOLDial.exe still running, and refusing to shutdown when the machine was turned off. I found a web site
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080623113237AACS5rr
which tells how to run msconfig and remove how the program gets started. I looked at the other entries in the startup list and everything there looks okay at this point. Actually, looking at it again, to refresh my memory for this post, there are other entries there that look strange -- two that are enabled, but appear to be empty, and some others that I should look up to see what they are. And AOLDial.exe is back on the list, although I thought I disabled it last night.
I also found
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/protect_start/list-of-anti-malware-program-cleanupuninstall/407bf6da-c05d-4546-8788-0aa4c25a1f91
which had a note about how to get rid of "ghost drivers" and found a couple of those.
Most of the services that run at startup are update programs: HP Software Update, Java Update, Adobe Update Manager, My Heritage FTB Check Updates, Real Player update check, install shield update service, ... Presumably these programs will make a short query to see that everything is up to date, and then quit.
I guess one option would be to list every startup program and check what it is and if Mom needs it. Looks like there are about 25 startup items.
You might also try downloading the program "What's running", which shows what programs are running and are in the startup by common name rather than filename. Seth has used that to see if there are things that need to be deleted, etc.
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