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Windows Vista Secret #9: Kill the Startup Monsters

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If there's one thing that puts me off an application, it's when it unnecessarily inserts itself into the Windows startup process so that it can have its very own system tray icon from whence it can spam me with annoying messages. Obviously it makes sense for some applications to run on startup (for example, I want Windows Live Messenger to be running without me needing to manually start it each time). The problem is that there are multiple places where an application can register itself for execution on startup, and this makes it hard to retain control over which programs are granted such esteemed status.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this entry unless Windows Vista had a solution! From the start menu search bar, type System Configuration, and click on the link that comes up. You'll be required to provide privilege elevation unless you've disabled UAC, and then you'll see the following utility:

As you can see from the above screenshot, the Startup tab enumerates all the applications that are set to run as startup, regardless of whether they are set in the registry (either per-machine or per-user), the user profile, or simply the startup folder in the Programs entry of the start menu. You can disable any or all of them; they'll still be listed there so that you can switch them on again if you need to.

I should note in passing that this tool also allows you to do some other pretty useful things, like editing your boot configuration database (no need to master arcane bcdedit commands any longer) or accessing a variety of other system tools and utilities. It's the power user's configuration tool of choice - go check it out!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2006
    How is this different from msconfig in XP? (Start -> Run: msconfig)

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2006
    Win XP has the same feature.

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2006
    msconfig has been around since Windows 98. It wasn't in 2000 though, XP was the first of the NT family to include it.

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2006
    I was expecting something friendlier in Vista than XP when i read the  topic. Alas...

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2006
    PingBack from http://larchoye.com/2006/10/04/10-windows-vista-secrets-and-more-tim-sneath-vista-blogs/

  • Anonymous
    October 08, 2006
    A useful, more extensive, version for checking autorun activity is at (freshly acquired) sysinternals http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html

  • Anonymous
    October 10, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 12, 2006
    This is one of my frequently used apps in Windows (Vista or XP actually) as it allow me to control which

  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2006
    A better/easier way of doing this would be to load up Windows Defender (which comes with Vista) and looking in the 'Startup' section there. It provides the same details in a much more user-friendly way and will not prompt you about 'configurations' when you remove some of the items

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    Yay, you found the hard way to access msconfig!  Now that's a real secret!

  • Anonymous
    November 25, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2006
    It doesn't show all but the most obvious apps. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/Autoruns.mspx shows a bigger picture.