CCleaner Disable and Enable Startup Programs

I am working on a program for work which includes a startup manager. I have it to where the user can delete startup entries for programs, but it cannot disable startup entries.

With the CCleaner program a user has the ability to enable or disable. Can anyone give insight on how they are able to accomplish that? I have looked around in the registry but I don't see any differences to the keys when the startup is enable or disabled. Is this set in another location?

Edit: I used RegFromApp to monitor the registry while enabling and disabling startup on numerous programs. Turns out it actually creates keys if they don't already exist.

Kevin_

Posted 2013-07-08T15:50:04.517

Reputation: 123

2why reinvent the wheel? msconfig.exe (built) into windows can enable/disable startup programs. Why create a new one? – Keltari – 2013-07-08T15:56:59.663

1As a sys admin I don't give the users rights to msconfig. I have developed a program to where they can do these kinds of task, but without breaking their machines. – Kevin_ – 2013-07-08T16:26:01.183

Answers

As I am not the developer of CCleaner I can't give you exact details on how they might manage this, but in general entries under:

32bit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MsConfig

64bit :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MsConfig

will house "disabled" startup entries.

Jason Bristol

Posted 2013-07-08T15:50:04.517

Reputation: 776

Might want to correct your paths. There's no HKLM\SOFTWARE\Software or HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Software as far as I can see. – Karan – 2013-07-08T16:52:29.037

1The 64 bit path is correct. For 32 bit just remove the 2nd Software – Kevin_ – 2013-07-08T17:04:28.190

Ahh good catch, that was an error on my part, its been corrected – Jason Bristol – 2013-07-08T20:15:25.313

@Kevin_: Must confess I'm still not seeing HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Software in regedit (and I've checked on 2 PCs now with Win7 x64). – Karan – 2013-07-08T22:29:20.697

@Karan Interesting. Are you trying to do the same thing that I am? – Kevin_ – 2013-07-09T12:30:13.200

@Kevin_: Not really, but your query did get me thinking about something so was just checking it out. :) – Karan – 2013-07-09T16:39:47.700

@Karan I see. Well what I wound up doing was monitoring the registry to see what all was going on. You can do it with any executable by monitoring the process with RegFromApp. – Kevin_ – 2013-07-09T18:25:12.087

I believe in two possibilities:

Disabled startup entries are stored in a configuration file (. ini).
In the registry editor these values are stored in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MsConfig\startupreg.

stderr

Posted 2013-07-08T15:50:04.517

Reputation: 9 300

Wonder how come two people posted HKLM\SOFTWARE\Software as a valid path? Is this path actually present on your PC, because I don't see it at all in regedit. – Karan – 2013-07-08T16:48:54.847

I didn't see it either. I tested on a 32 bit machine and a 64 bit. – Kevin_ – 2013-07-08T17:06:47.390