26 January 2016

Run a program on Windows startup

I had a shortcut to a batch file that needed to run on the startup of Windows 10 x64 Enterprise startup. All the various methods described (adding to the Startup folder, adding to regular Run key in registry) didn't work. Finally, this post on Stack Overflow solved the issue. This should work well on other versions of Windows too.

Because this is a 64-bit Windows, the change has to be made in Wow6432Node:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
There, you can add a new string value, give it a name, and then double-click to edit it. Place the full path of the program in double quotes. If it's something requiring administrator privileges, on startup, Windows will display the UAC dialog.

No comments: