Do you ever uninstall programs and they are still listed under startup items in msconfig? Personally, I found myself with 30 such items from old installs. Microsoft leaves you no way to clean up this list, but have no fear, I have figured it out for you.

1. Open MSconfig and click on the startup items tab
2. Open Regedit and navigate to HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Sharedtools/MSconfig
3. Compare the list of registry keys under startupfolder and startupreg with their counterparts in msconfig.
4. Delete the keys which are no longer valid.
5. Voila! You've cleaned up msconfig.

Oh yeah... they always tell you to back up your registry before doing stuff so I suppose I should say the same, although I assume most of you are somewhat proficient in windows xp it never hurts to be safe. Happy tweaking!