Question Disabling startup apps on windows 10

[LukaM2001]

I have latest version of windows 10. Haven't had any contact with win10 before can't figure out how to disable apps from launching on startup.
I have already tried:
1)from task manager startup tab(but it doesn't show any apps i want to disable)
2)msconfig(system configurations) same as task manager
3)windows setting>apps>startup
Here's what my msconfig and task manager tabs look like:https://ibb.co/KDzCHXr

 

[britechguy]

What are you trying to disable? That would be a good starting point.

 

[cherry blossoms]

Going tediously through the setup tabs, reading all entries, and disabling from there is one option.

Microsoft's Sysinternals Autoruns utility allows a bit more flexibility in disabling some startup items.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

For certain other items, including lots of windows 10 telemetry items, W10Privacy is a good tool.

W10Privacy - Privacy made easy

The by default highly questionable set options concerning privacy and data protection in Windows 10 brought me to the idea to develop this program. Microsoft generously enables everybody to change the concerning settings, but hides them in countless menus, where a normal user does not want to...

www.winprivacy.de

 

[Colif]

Only thing not disabled already is audio, why would you want to disable that at startup?

Careful you know what everything is you stop or you can make things worse for yourself.

 

[britechguy]

Amen, amen, amen!! , Colif.

Hence the reason for my question. I hasten to ask before saying this that I am not stating that the OP is a fool, but when it comes to disabling things that are started up by default by the operating system it's a, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!," kind of situation.

If it's not abundantly clear exactly what something is, and you didn't install it, then disabling it is a very dicey proposition.

 

[Colif]

The amount of people who come in here after following "How To" videos on youtube makes me question the actions of people that want to stop everything running.

The fun ones are those that move the default save location and then get windows updates that mess everything up.

You can stop too many things and windows won't even load.

I agreed with the sentiment of your 1st post

 

[britechguy]

Truly, the mystery to me, virtually always, is the "Why?," of wanting to do this.

My first question always is, "What about how your system is performing/behaving is unsatisfactory to you?"

If there is no immediate and clear answer, then requests of this class are met with, "Then why would you want to mess with OS startup processes to begin with?"

In this day and age of processing firepower very well in excess of what the typical user will ever come close to exploiting, worrying about the CPU cycles (or disk I/O, or whatever) of virtually any OS process functioning normally is a waste of time and effort. Windows 10 and any of the "big and modern" Linux distros are optimized out the wazoo by engineers who know exactly what they're doing. End users (and I include myself in that category for the purposes of this conversation) second guessing the folks that design and maintain OSes makes absolutely, positively no sense whatsoever.

 

[LukaM2001]

What are you trying to disable? That would be a good starting point.

Yeah, you guys are right i missed some info in my question. I was trying to disable steam, utorrent, malwarbytes and some other apps because they slow down startup of my laptop.I did disable most of them from the setting of the apps but the important thing is they dont even show up in the task manager "startup" tab. it only shows the apps that you can see in screenshots(and which I'm NOT trying to disable) and no new apps i download myself.

 

[Colif]

Steam should show in the Task manager/startup window - it does on my PC. I have it disabled
I uninstalled malwarebytes yesterday as I have bitdefender... Its possible malwarebytes runs as a scheduled task at startup, that is how Bitdefender starts, it doesn't show anywhere else.
I am not sure about U Torrent.

I can see the advantage of not having any of those running at startup.
Steam auto downloads updates
Malwarebytes auto runs a scan
and I assume torrents are the same as steam.

 

[britechguy]

Well, you've pretty much gone full circle.

Applications which can (and most often do) fire up at startup and that have a toggle within them to enable/disable that rely on standard Windows mechanisms to implement it. But, you do not want to be using the Windows mechanisms directly yourself, but the setting in the applications in question. The developers of these applications may be starting several different processes, some of which may not be easily recognizable to any end user. You should always use only the built in settings of these sorts of application to toggle "Start when Windows starts" on or off.

 

[Colif]

Steam -
With Steam open, click the Steam menu, and choose Settings.
Click on the Interface tab, and uncheck the box that says:
"Run Steam when my computer starts."

Currently a bug with Malwarebytes free, you can't stop it running at startup - https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/242703-prevent-malwarebytes-free-from-starting-at-pc-boot/

Utorrent -

1. Verify that the startup option is disabled in uTorrent options.
2. Check if you have a uTorrent shortcuts under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\, if so - remove it.
   • When windows start, it will run each of the files in that directory

https://superuser.com/questions/1274825/utorrent-starting-up-automatically

 

[LukaM2001]

Steam -
With Steam open, click the Steam menu, and choose Settings.
Click on the Interface tab, and uncheck the box that says:
"Run Steam when my computer starts."

Currently a bug with Malwarebytes free, you can't stop it running at startup - https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/242703-prevent-malwarebytes-free-from-starting-at-pc-boot/

Utorrent -

1. Verify that the startup option is disabled in uTorrent options.
2. Check if you have a uTorrent shortcuts under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\, if so - remove it.
   • When windows start, it will run each of the files in that directory

https://superuser.com/questions/1274825/utorrent-starting-up-automatically

Thanks, as I said before I disabled all those apps already.But i also have them on my main pc(win8.1) and having all apps in the task manager is way more comefortable and was wondering why they weren't showing on my laptop. also I've seen other pc's with win10 where task manager startup tab works just fine.

 

[Colif]

unrelated but win 10 has a new feature where it remembers what was running previous shutdown and starts the same programs again on restart. Its not going to be reason why this is happening with your startup tab, but it sure can be confusing if you don't close everything at shutdown like I do.

I am not 100% sure how you fix file explorer... as that is what the tab is part of

Try this
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth
and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

is this a new install or old? COuld try making a new local user and see if it has same issues, as problem could be your user profile - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au...-create-a-local-user-or-administrator-account

 

[britechguy]

but it sure can be confusing if you don't close everything at shutdown like I do.

It can be confusing otherwise, too. It has been known to not work correctly and cause things to fire up even that you know you manually exited prior to shutdown.

Apparently Firefox (and I wouldn't be surprised if some other browsers) has this feature built in to it, where you can tell it to fire up on system restart.

Personally, I hate this feature, and I have not yet found the settings in the Win10 hierarchy to disable it as I don't know "the Microsoft magic name" for the feature. If anyone happens to be installing/reinstalling Windows 10, Version 1903, and is watching as things progress I know that eventually, I believe it's after the "Hi," screen, you get a message about this feature, which I would love to know the verbiage of that message. I would have thought this would default to "off" but it appears not, at least on some machines.

Now, back to the OP's comment, "task manager is way more comefortable and was wondering why they weren't showing on my laptop." I will give this piece of advice once more, hoping that it will be heard, but which you are free to ignore: You should use the program's own controls when those are available. It is the program that makes those task manager entries and it is the program that will remove them on request. If something happens to use multiple processes you're also certain that all of them will be either disabled or removed. It's very simply the safest technique.

 

[Colif]

Feature has been around 2 years

How to Stop Windows 10 From Reopening Last Open Apps on Startup

• Press Windows key + D to hide all windows and show the desktop.
  1. Then, press Alt + F4 to show the shutdown dialog.
  2. Select Shut down from the list and click OK to confirm.

Alternatively, use the Command Prompt or the Run dialogue to shut down or restart Windows. Use the first command below to shut down, and the second to restart:
shutdown /s /t 0
shutdown /r /t 0

Started in 1703
No easy way to do it besides just closing everything

 

[britechguy]

Thanks. I was aware of that, but the "issue" didn't appear for me until 1903 showed up (or maybe it was 1809). I haven't changed a blessed thing about how I exit Windows, and that always includes manually exiting each program I have open, one-by-one, before doing so.

The behavior has disappeared recently, but I've changed nothing in my settings nor in my behavior. It was a minor annoyance at worst, but I would still love to know what the root cause was and why it stopped (at least for the time being).

I believe using a desktop shortcut for shutdown and with shutdown /s /t 0 being the target command, will also prevent this. (Some may want to use the /f switch, too, if they want to force instant hard shutdown of all programs, but I want that to be as graceful as possible.)

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

you will find a lot of the Start Up entries in the registry under keys like:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

also, installing a program like CCleaner gives you the option to go through most Start Up entries and scheduled start up tasks and editing them.