Windows XP Hacks

Create Multiple Startup Profiles with Advanced Startup Manager

If you need to start different programs on startup, depending on what you need to do on your PC, create different startup profiles with this startup utility.

With the hacks covered in this chapter, you can customize how XP starts up. But there’s one thing these hacks won’t be able to do for you—create different startup profiles. For that, you need downloadable software.

Let’s say, for example, you have a laptop that you sometimes run attached to a keyboard, monitor, and an always-on Internet connection, and other times you travel with it, so it is not connected to the Internet. When you use it when you travel, you use it primarily in airplanes, airports, and other places where you typically aren’t connected to the Internet. You also run a piece of monitoring software that will send a signal to a call center if your laptop is stolen. You don’t need to run that software when you’re not on the road.

Ideally, you would have one set of programs that run automatically at home and another set of programs that run when you’re on the road. At home, you might want instant messenger software and file sharing software to load at startup; on the road, you don’t want that software to load automatically, but you do want your monitoring software to load.

Advanced StartUp Manager—a piece of shareware from Ray’s Lab (http://www.rayslab.com), shown in Figure 1-8—lets you create multiple startup profiles so that you can have separate profiles ...