Question How To Delay a Registry-Launched Startup App?

Circa 3000

Distinguished
Mar 23, 2009
43
0
18,530
A recent Windows update broke my mission-critical audio control hardware (specifically, two Avid Artist Series control surfaces - an Artist Transport and an Artist Control). These have worked flawlessly for years, but now, when the computer boots, I receive a pop-up error message: "EUCON Client can not access the Bonjour service and will now exit. Please check your Bonjour installation and service settings." When I view Task Manager, Bonjour is running fine, but there's another task, EuControl.exe, that appears to be stuck, burning 10% of CPU with Power usage consistently reading "Very high." If I kill the task and manually relaunch it, the EuControl service launches properly (and disappears from Task Manager) and my Avid control surfaces return to full functionality.

So, without knowing the root cause of the trouble, it appears that a workaround is to delay launch of the EuControl task (perhaps until the Bonjour service has had time to fully instantiate itself). The EuControl task appears in these two registry keys:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Computer\HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-614899641-279313504-50020289-1001\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run


...both with the name / value:

EuControl / C:\Program Files\Euphonix\EuCon\EuControl.exe


If this was a service, I could choose "Automatic (Delayed Start)" from the Startup Type drop-down list in the service's Properties. But it's not, and I know of no other way to delay this entry without resorting to some sort of bloaty third-party utility.

How can I delay launching this task at startup?

Any advice is appreciated.
 
Last edited:

gardenman

Splendid
Moderator
See the Task Scheduler idea on this page: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/delay-startup-programs-to-boot-windows-faster/

This would mean removing the other entries from the registry. Rather than directly editing the registry, you should consider using AutoRuns to remove those entries. If you do directly edit the registry, make a backup first.

If that doesn't help, one of the programs listed on that page may help.

I just downloaded and tested Autorun Organizer. I didn't like it. It tried to install extra junk in the setup (if you try that one, be careful and read it carefully as you run setup) and it wanted to stay open after I had made the changes. It probably auto-runs on startup too (to delay the programs).
 
Do you really need Bonjour? It is Apple's TCP/IP networking stack (instead of using Windows' own they just ported over the Apple one as a service) so is used by Apple software like iTunes and Safari to find shared music and print. Lately I think it is also used by Skype, Ruckus and Solidworks though so you could set it to manual start instead of uninstalling it
 

Circa 3000

Distinguished
Mar 23, 2009
43
0
18,530
Thank you for the solid advice guys!

Well, this is weird.

I disabled the startup task (Autoruns) and scheduled it to run with a 30 second delay in Task Scheduler, but the same problem occurs. Task Scheduler says the task is "running" and it never stops. As before, EuControl appears in Task Manager and won't go away. If I kill the task in Task Scheduler or Task Manager and run it again from within Task Scheduler, the result is the same. The only difference is that CPU consumption is just 0.1% on successive tries.

But then, if I kill the stuck task and manually execute EuControl.exe from the command line, everything works as it should - EuControl doesn't appear in Task Manager (or perhaps disappears before it can be seen), the respective Euphonix taskbar tools appear, and my hardware controllers function properly.

So, if timing isn't the problem, maybe it's a permissions issue? I told Task Scheduler to run the task with admin privileges, but this had no effect.

I'm stumped.