Start a program at bootup 3

[Chris1234]

I'm using MailWasher from MailWasher.net. It's running on my laptop and a friends desktop and doing very well.

I'd like it to be up and running at every boot-up. I thought that I knew how to do this, but I'm not getting there this time.

Thanks for the help.
Chris C.

 

[KimLeece]

To start a program each time Windows starts

Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Taskbar and Start Menu.
Click the Advanced tab, and then click Advanced.
In the Start Menu folder, find the shortcut to the program you want to start each time you start Windows, and then drag it to Startup folder.
Note

You can also add a program shortcut to the Startup menu by dragging the shortcut icon to the Start button. When the Start menu opens, drag the icon to the Programs menu, and then drop it on the Startup menu.

The above is a straight paste from Windows ME help - sometimes you can even find the answer there!!!

Kim Leece

 

[Chris1234]

Kim;

What you describe is adding a program to the start menu which does not cause the program to be activated at bootup. In the case of my laptop, I have 31 items on the start menu, very few of which are brought up at bootup. Items that are brought up at bootup appear at the far right of the taskbar just to the right of the time of day.

What you suggested is the very same pit that I fell into multiple times while trying to accomplish this thing which I suspect (perhaps WISH) can be done and probabably very easily. Since you fell into the same pit where I ended up so many times, I have some hope that perhaps I'm not as dumb as I thought. Thanks for taking the time to post.

Chris C.

 

[KimLeece]

I think that you have misunderstood! There are two folders: one is the start menu folder, the other is the start up folder. If you add something to the start menu folder it behaves as you said and only appears on the start menu drop down list. If you copy a shortcut to the start up folder (windows/start menu/programs/start up) the shortcut will be executed everytime you start windows. So make a shortcut to the program you want to start, and copy/drop it into the start up folder(NOT start menu folder)

Kim.

 

[Chris1234]

Kim;

You are correct. I did misread your first post. So I went back and followed your first post but the START UP folder is currently empty, but programs AVG (anti-virus from grisoft.com), ZoneAlarm, MailWasher, PopUpStopper, IntelliPoint, volume adjustments and 4 Toshiba programs are all started during bootup. TGhis indicates that they must be in some other folder and the contents of START UP isn't what you and I would expect it to be??!!??

Your second post gets to the same empty folder a little different. And we can also get to that folder by right click in an empty area by the time of day.

So I seem to be unable to get to a folder in which I would expect to find shortcuts to the 10 items that are currently started during bootup. You sound very sure so I'm beginning to suspect that the 10 items that now start during bootup are in some other folder and the item(s) that I want to add should be in the folder that you have pointed me towards??

Thanks
Chris C.

 

[KimLeece]

Chris,
There are several ways to run programs at startup if one thinks back historically. In the beginning in DOS we had config.sys for drivers and autoexec.bat for programs. Later with the advent of Windows we got win.ini and the registry - to name a few. Explorer.exe runs everytime Windows is started, but you won't find it in any startup folders! Some programs create registry entries when they are installed which automatically start them at boot, anti-virus programs, firewalls etc. Therefore a program that is designed to do this doesn't use shortcuts and startup folders. The point of the startup folders is to give an option to automatically start a program that did not write any commands anywhere else. There are actually two main startup folders, one as a subdirectory of the Windows directory and another that can be found as a subdirectory of ALLUSERS. If you add different users to the machine then for each created user you will get a new startup folder in their tree. This gives the possibility of having different programs in the startup folder of each user. In this last scenario with many users some programs start for all users when the machine is booted, and others which are particular to a user are also started if they are in the users startup folder. This explains why you won't find all the programs in the startup folder. I hope that I have been clear in the explanation.

Kim.

 

[wolluf]

Couple of handy helps for this:-

http://www.lpacomputers.telinco.co.uk/SM.zip

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml