What is clistart.exe doing on my computer?

CLIStart.exe is a program that may have been installed on your computer when you purchased it. The exact disk location where it should be stored on your computer is also shown below to verfiy it is not spyware, as many spyware programs use similiar names and just locate them elsewhere on your hard drive.
Always check the proper disk location of your programs if you are concerned that they may be spyware or malware. This program is from ATI and its related to your graphics card. It is the Control Center Icon and it will be viewable in your system tray. It is not required to be there so you can remove this from your startup.
Non-system processes like clistart.exe originate from software you installed on your system. Since most applications store data on your hard disk and in your system's registry, it is likely that your computer has suffered fragmentation and accumulated invalid entries which can affect your PC's performance.

In Windows Task Manager, you can see what CPU, memory, disk and network utilization is causing the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center Icon process. To access the Task Manager, hold down the Ctrl Shift Esc keys at the same time. These three buttons are located on the far left of your keyboard.

The clistart.exe is an executable file on your computer's hard drive. This file contains machine code. If you start the software ATI Graphics Hardware on your PC, the commands contained in clistart.exe will be executed on your PC. For this purpose, the file is loaded into the main memory (RAM) and runs there as a ATI Catalyst™ Control Center Icon process (also called a task).

Is clistart.exe harmful?

This process is considered safe. It is unlikely to pose any harm to your system. The clistart.exe file should be located in the folder C:\Program Files\ati technologies\ati.ace or C:\Program Files\ati technologies\ati.ace\core-static. Otherwise it could be a Trojan.

Can I stop or remove clistart.exe?

Many non-system processes that are running can be stopped because they are not involved in running your operating system. clistart.exe is used by 'ATI Graphics Hardware'. This is an application created by 'ATI'.

If you no longer use ATI Graphics Hardware, you can permanently remove this software and thus clistart.exe from your PC. To do this, press the Windows key R at the same time and then type 'appwiz.cpl'. Then find ATI Graphics Hardware in the list of installed programs and uninstall this application.

Is clistart.exe CPU intensive?

This process is not considered CPU intensive. However, running too many processes on your system may affect your PC’s performance. To reduce system overload, you can use the Microsoft System Configuration Utility (MSConfig) or the Windows Task Manager to manually find and disable processes that launch upon start-up.

Use the Windows Resource Monitor to find out which processes and applications write/read the most on the hard drive, send the most data to the Internet, or use the most memory. To access the Resource Monitor, press the key combination Windows key R and then enter 'resmon'.

Why is clistart.exe giving me errors?

Most clistart issues are caused by the application executing the process. The surest way to fix these errors is to update or uninstall this application. Therefore, please search the ATI website for the latest ATI Graphics Hardware update.