How do I manage what programs startup in Windows 8?
There's a nifty new tab in the 'Task Manager' called 'Startup' where I can manage the program that run at startup.
BUT... It doesn't show all of the application that run at startup:
Some of the hidden culprits are:
- Steam
- Skype
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Cisco VPN
- Java Update
"What about the registry?" Here's what's found in there:
Which doesn't contain all of the running programs.
How do I manage these startup applications from within Windows 8?
Solution 1:
(This tool is not built in Window 8 but...) You can use Autoruns from Windows Sysinternals to figure out what applications are starting up on startup. You can also disable them too.
Solution 2:
Absolutely nothing better than CCleaner for this, now with added Win8 supprt. Look under Tools -> Startup:
To remove an entry simply right click on it and select "Delete":
And then select Ok:
Note: You might need to run CCleaner as admin to remove these entries.
Solution 3:
There is always Registry Editor (regedit.exe).
Apps that launch on startup are located in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
You would stop an item from launching by deleting its key.
It's up to you if you want to save them or not (i.e., just by jotting down the strings, and the key type), in case you want to readd them later.
There's also this key location as well: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig Which yields the following:
Deleting the entire folder should stop if from running at startup.
Of course this is not an elegant way to manage things. I would only use it if the application didn't respect its own settings.