Windows Me Annoyances

Making a Startup Script

The process of making a startup script—a script that is executed automatically when Windows starts—is quite simple. Essentially, you create a script as you normally would and then take steps to have it executed when Windows starts. There are two ways to do this:

Use the StartUp folder

Put a shortcut to the script in your StartUp folder (usually \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp). This is by far the easiest to implement, but also the most fragile, because it’s equally easy to disable. Additionally, if you have multiple users configured, this will only work for the current user.

Use the Registry

Open the Registry Editor (if you’re not familiar with the Registry Editor, see Chapter 3), and expand the branches to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Select New and then String Value from the Edit menu, and type startup script. Double-click on the new Startup Script value, type the name of your script (e.g., c:\scripts\myscript.vbs), and click OK.

This has a similar effect to “Use the StartUp Folder” earlier in this section, except that it’s harder to disable and it works for every user configured on the system.

A startup script can contain a list of programs that you want run in a specific order when Windows starts, such as connecting to the Internet and checking your email. (Explorer’s Startup folder doesn’t let you choose the order in which programs are run.) But there are other, less apparent uses for a startup script, such ...