I can find all sorts of stuff about Windows Defender helping you prevent unwanted at-startup program loading, but I can’t figure out how to add a program without punching it into the registry by hand. Help my hrrrdurrrr, please.
From the Help and Support link on the Vista Start Menu:
Run a program automatically when Windows starts
If you always open the same programs after starting your computer, such as a web browser or e‑mail program, you might find it convenient to have them start automatically when you start Windows. Programs or shortcuts placed in the Startup folder will run whenever Windows starts.
Click the Start button , click All Programs, right-click the Startup folder, and then click Open.
Open the location that contains the item to which you want to create a shortcut.
Right-click the item, and then click Create Shortcut. The new shortcut appears in the same location as the original item.
Drag the shortcut into the Startup folder.
The next time you start Windows, the program will run automatically.
Note
You can also make an individual file, such as a word-processing document, open automatically by dragging a shortcut of the file into the Startup folder.
Hi! I make money writing about technology. Thanks! (I did look all over google, fwiw.)
To be fair, most people don’t look in the built-in HELP features of most programs because of how useless they tend to be.
On the other hand, Microsoft seems to have done a fair amount to correcting that with Vista.
About F’n time that “Help” actually helped.
You should send your check, or at least you thanks, to Denny Atkin (DennyA here on Qt3.)
You know, you’ve been able to add programs you want to the Start Up folder since Windows 98, I believe.
Ouch, Joel got RTFM’d.
I deserved it, so I don’t mind. And Steve’s right: Copying stuff to the Start Up folder is pretty much the standard way that it’s been done forever and it still works in Vista. I was looking for some fancy new process that would register it with Defender (which, yup, happens after you copy something into the Start Up folder).
Can I say that besides a mess of sound issues (my Creative X-Fi Music works in fits and spurts and my onboard Realtek is almost as bad) that aren’t necessarily Microsoft’s fault * I’m actually sort of digging Vista? In a lot of ways it’s just a gussied up XP, but it’s a nice gussy, and while I don’t know why they’ve ditched the menu bar as a uniform interface feature, the whole thing seems like it would be a lot easier for the average person to use. (In fact, that was seed of my idiocy with the start-up program thing: I was looking for a simple “Click here to launch a program a startup” dialog.)
If nothing else it’s made it sort of fun to use Windows again, even just to play with the frippery, and I haven’t had that experience with Windows in a long time.
- MS changed the way sound works in ways I don’t quite fully grok but that seem pretty smart. (Per process volume control is one welcome benefit.) Unfortunately that’s caused a scramble from Creative and other sound hardware guys to figure out how to make their old hardware work. I can’t believe that with the years and years of lead-up time to Vista they didn’t have proper warning about the changes, so I’m blaming the hardware manufacturers instead of Microsoft until I hear otherwise.
I understand they hired only the most talented, most knowledeable writers on the planet to write Vista help. The cream of the crop.
But seriously, it’s actually worth looking in Help nowadays. There’s a good base of topics there, and Vista’s like Office now in that there’s “better when connected” help… If there are lots of queries on a topic that’s not covered, or if there’s dissatisfaction with an existing topic, the help will be updated to cover the situation. Those guys sound like they’re still about as busy now as when I changed jobs not long after the on-disc help was wrapped up.