RGdot

Tag: msconfig

  • What Is In Your Startup?

    One of the important ways to keep a system running well is to be aware of the programs that are run or launched when a system is started. The small yet highly useful Startup Control Panel was featured on RGdot earlier this year but another software from the excellent Nirsoft collection deserves a mention as well.

    WhatInStartup is described by its author as

    This utility displays the list of all applications that are loaded automatically when Windows starts up


    WhatInStartup
         This 47KB zipped download displays the name of the item that is started. The kind, that is if it is a registry item or a file in the startup folder of the system. And also the version, company name and perhaps most useful the location and the command line used to launched the item.
    Two additional features that set apart WhatInStartup is the ability to run the program from another drive and to permanently disable items. The former feature is helpful because WhatInStartup can be used when a Windows system or partition is not working and therefore one can load WhatInStartup from another instance of Windows to check on startup items on the non-working system. The latter feature makes sure that when a user disables a startup item it can not add itself back to the startup list later. This can potentially be extremely useful when a piece of malware insists on reappearing even when deleted. It is also worth noting that the permanent disable feature can be disabled within the program if the user so chooses and as usual with programs from Nirsoft the program comes a with a collection of command line parameters that control many of the behaviours of its programs and in this case includes working with the permanent disable feature.

    WhatInStartup works on any system running Windows 2000 and up, including Windows 7.

  • Know Your System Better With Startup Control Panel

    One of the ways to see which process(es) and program(s) are taking over your system is to look at which starts along with your computer. Windows Start menu has a Startup shortcut that shows the often legitimate programs that start for the current or all users.

    Startup Control Panel and StartupMonitor by Mike Lin add to the arsenal of useful and simple tools that give computer users a better picture of their system. They provide powerful yet lightweight means of viewing, controlling and detecting possible resource hogs and even security threats.

    StartupMonitor at a 60KB download runs in the background and is only seen when a program wants to add an entry to the system’s startup. Sometimes such an entry may be necessary, may be a program such as a calendar has to be visible or running all the time, in which case the change or addition can be accepted with one click. At other times the program may be suspicious or not wanted, when for example a program wants to call home to retrieve updates automatically, and here a simple No click will do the job. StartupMonitor will add an entry to the Windows Start menu to stop it running, if needed.

    Startup Control Panel at a 34KB executable (to be installed) or a 59KB zip file (run straight after unzipping) download on the other hand has an interface.  It is divided into tabs that let the user view virtually all entries in the system’s startup. The tabs are Startup User which shows the items for the current user, Startup Common which shows the ones for all users, Run Once which are those that can occur when a program or report is installed or generated and needs to run at the next system startup only, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE for the registry entries affecting all users when programs add a startup entry to the Windows registry and HKEY_CURRENT_USER for the registry entries affecting the current user.

    Each entry can be viewed in the control panel and unchecked to not run or simply be deleted to not be seen and be sent to the program’s Deleted tab. Much like looking at the aforementioned Startup shortcut provided by Windows some of the tasks acheivable by the StartupControl Panel tools can be done when accessing Microssoft’s own MSConfig but Startup Control Panel offers a more complete picture of what is happening. One additional feature is that it is possible to send an entry to other tabs via one right click. Sending to different tabs simply means, for example, that a process can be sent form Startup User to Startup Common and therefore allowing it to run for all users.

    Startup Control Panel and StartupMonitor are two extremely worthy free downloads from Mike Lin.