There are several different ways for a program to startup automatically when the system is booted in to Windows 7.

See this tutorial if you are interested in quickly disabling certain programs from running at startup.

The first location can be found by clicking Start, going to All Programs, and looking for a folder called Startup. This folder contains shortcuts to executable programs that will run at startup. When Windows boots up, it checks this folder for shortcuts and runs the programs that the shortcuts refer to. If there is a program that you would like to run at startup, simply make a shortcut to the program and drop the shortcut in this folder.

Another way for programs to autostart in Windows 7 is through the registry. To view the registry keys that are making programs run at startup, click the Start button, type regedit, and hit enter. I found the most startup keys within HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run


There are several other places for similar registry keys to hide, one of them being in the HKEY_USERS folder. Within here, all these folders contain entries for programs to run at startup. When you expand one of these, you need to then go to Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Run. In this key, the startup entries can be found.

Last updated: 7/18/2011
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