What ways exist to control (enable/disable) automatic startup of applications at the end of system boot?

Question

I am running Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). I remember the days when on Windows 95 it was possible to cause programs to launch once the system had finished booting by placing a link to such applications in a folder known as the Startup folder. On my system there seems to be such a folder, namely C:\Users\MyUserNameHere.MyPCNameHere\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup, but it is empty despite the fact that several programs on my system load into memory once the PC has finished booting up.

What I would like to know is, on Windows 7, to have an application start up automatically after system boot, is it necessary to find the relevant option in the application itself and enable/disable it via the application's GUI, or is there also some other place on the system which can be used to control this behavior, listing every application for which can have this functionality enabled/disabled. Also, is the Startup folder nowadays an obsolete feature, or is it still possible/common to use it for starting applications automatically?

Thanks.

Answer 1

• Click "Start" (MS Icon) in the system tray.
• Click "Run..."
• Type "msconfig" and click "ok".
• Browse the "Startup" tab to see a list of applications that load on start-up.

Be mindful of anything that you enable or disable and if you're uncertain, do your due diligence to find out what it is first.

Having said that, if you are looking to add an application to start-up, you can do so by adding that applications link to the startup folder.