Starting Programs Automatically

If you use certain programs every day, you can have Windows start them for you whenever you log on to your account. For example, many people start their e-mail programs first thing in the morning; other people might work all day in a particular accounting program. You might open your organization's intranet site each morning to look for announcements or open a news Web site to stay up to date on the headlines.

To specify that a particular program should start automatically, you place a shortcut to the program in your Startup folder. Each user has his or her own Startup folder, and there is also a Startup folder that applies to all users, so you can choose to make a program start automatically for everyone, or just for yourself.

You can access your Startup folder or the Startup folder that belongs to all users of your computer through the Start menu or through Windows Explorer. You cannot access another user's Startup folder.

In this exercise, you will specify that a program start automatically when anyone logs on to your computer. This example uses Microsoft Paint, but you can substitute any other program. There are no practice files for this exercise.

1.	On the Start menu, point to All Programs, right-click Startup, and then click Explore All Users. Tip Clicking Explore opens your own Startup folder. If you only want to check the contents of the Startup folder and not change them, you can click Open All Users to open Windows Explorer with the Folders list closed. Windows Explorer opens with the Startup folder for all users displayed in the Content pane. (Whether or not the folder contains any files depends on your installation.) Even if you usually work in Windows Explorer with the Navigation pane or the Folders list closed, choosing Explore All Users opens Windows Explorer with them both open.
2.	Under Programs in the Folders list, click Accessories to display the contents of that folder in the Content pane. [View full size image] Troubleshooting If the Navigation pane and Folders list aren't open, open them now.
3.	If necessary, scroll the Navigation pane until the Startup folder is visible.
4.	In the Content pane, point to the shortcut to the Paint program, hold down the secondary mouse button, and drag the program to the Startup folder in the Navigation pane, releasing the mouse button when you see the Move to Startup ScreenTip. When you release the mouse button, a context menu (also called a shortcut menu) appears. Troubleshooting The context menu appears because you used the secondary mouse button to drag the file, rather than the primary mouse button. If you use the primary mouse button, the Paint shortcut simply moves to the folder, and you don't see the context menu. You would then need to copy it back into the Accessories folder.
5.	On the context menu, click Copy Here. In the User Account Control dialog box, if you're running as an administrator, click Continue. Otherwise, enter an administrator password, and then click OK. A copy of the shortcut is created in the Startup folder for all users of your computer. Paint will start automatically for each user as she or he logs on to Windows.
6.	In the Folders list, click the Startup folder to display your new shortcut.
7.	On the Start menu, click the Shut Down Options button, and then click Log Off. Then log on again. Shut Down Options After Windows starts, a new Paint window opens.