Vista Tutorial - Startup Programs - Enable or Disable

Hello Freaknet, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Since the startup program is the registry editor (regedit.exe), then you should be able to just disable or delete it from the startup list since it is not need to run at the startup of Vista.

Check with one of the methods in OPTION TWO in this tutorial to see if it is listed for you to get rid of it.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Shawn,

Thanks for another great tutorial.
The 'Through Task Scheduler' option worked for me.
Wanted to run 'Hot Swap' so I can safely unplug my external hard drive, only use it for backups.
Had to set it to 'start at login' and unselect 'autostart' option on the program.
Now it's working like I want it to.
Your helping a lot of us who want to learn 'to do it ourselves'.
Seems like whenever I want to find out how to do something, I can find it here and your name is on it!
Great work.......
Dave

You're welcome Dave. Thank you.

Just to be safe, I just removed explorer.exe and SVPWUTIL.exe from my start-up programs. Should I keep these?

EDIT:
Nevermind. I can't remove explorer.exe from my startup. I wonder why Bleepingcomputers tells you it's undesirable to have at startup.

Shortmantuff,

You will need to have explorer.exe running for Windows Explorer and taskbar to work.

The SVPWUTIL.exe program is just up to you though as at that link. You do not need to have it run though.

Hope this helps some,
Shawn

Thanks for this great tutorial. I have one question though: how do I know which programs I can disable? Some are obvious but I'd like to know which ones are essential for Windows to run at startup.
Thanks,
--e.

Hello Elisabeth,

Usually you may be able to tell by the file name or location to see if it's a driver or program (ex: antivirus). You can also use Google to look up the file name if you are not sure what it may belong to. If you disable the wrong one, then you can always just enable it again (in Safe Mode if you have to) and restart to be back to normal though.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Also, I don't know if you know of the web site but Bleeping Computers (Another computer forum, one that includes HiJack This log help) has a nice list to help you determine what you might find desirable to keep. But then again, they said that explorer.exe was undesirable and it's essential to have running. I would try googling it first like Brink said and if you can't find anything, join Bleepingcomputers (it's free) and look at their suggestions.

Shawn,
On the OP, you said:
>However, it is also unacceptable to allow administrative programs that are started
>from these locations to prompt for your consent every time you start up your computer.

I have an administrative program in startup.
Every time vista starts it asks for admin permission.
Is your OP out of date?

thanks,
gordon
vista basic, SP2

Hello Gordon,

Na, it was just worded badly . It's suppose to block the elevated program at startup and prompt you with UAC before allowing it to run.

I changed the wording to help make it more understandable than it was before.