The old fashion way was to dig deep into the registry in few key areas and change or remove entries. Today, there are several pieces of software that help you disable startup programs. I use and recommend three of them…

Startup Control Panel

Startup Control Panel by Mike Lin is one of the original if not the original piece to let you configure which programs start. It interface is a control panel that let you tab through the various spots a program can be starting. You simply uncheck the program you wish to disable. If that breaks something never fear, you can easily add the check back to bring things back to normal. I recommend this to all.

Autoruns

AutoRuns is a more comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations. At first run the ‘Everything’ tab it starts on can be overwhelming. If you’re more technically inclined and have a pesky application you can’t seem to stop from booting this might just be your answer. This application is more powerful, but still falls in a safe category as most of the time you can undo anything you’ve done.

HijackThis

With great power comes great responsibility (I like saying that). HijackThis this is an awesome piece of software in skilled hands. Skilled hands I warn you. You can really screw your computer up with this software. Trend Micro purchased them a while back, but haven’t screwed it up, yet. HijackThis was designed more for helping you rid you computer of spyware but for the nastiest startup programs, this is the tool.