How to stop programs from loading when Windows starts

a lot of Applications start when you boot your Windows computer—probably more than you’d expect. You can turn some of these off in Windows settings. Applications > start upand others in the settings for that particular app. Not always: some apps are stubborn.

That’s where AutoRuns comes in. This free app is provided by Sysinternals, a branch of Microsoft. It gives you a complete – and I mean complete – list of everything that starts up when Windows starts up. It also allows you to disable things from starting on boot. If you have a few stubborn programs you don’t want to uninstall, this is the tool you need.

Stop applications from starting when you log in

Autoruns comes as a zip file, which you can extract and save wherever you want. open autoruns.exe And the application scans your computer to see which applications start at boot.

There is a surprising amount of information here, but beginners should click log on tab, only shows apps that start when you sign in to your user account. Any application you don’t want to start should be here – uncheck it and it won’t start at startup.

For example, I don’t use OneDrive, but Windows insists that I start it every time my computer starts up. I uninstalled OneDrive, closed Autoruns, and restarted my computer. The icon never appeared. I did the same for Steam and Epic game launcher. For most people, that’s all you need to know: uncheck anything you don’t want to boot and it won’t. But let’s dig a little deeper.

Learn more about your computer

The best thing about this software is that it gives you the opportunity to know which applications are running in the background of your computer and what they are doing. To get started, I recommend hitting the “Hide Windows entries” button in the toolbar. After configuring Windows with this enabled, you’ll only see things related to the software you’ve installed.

You may notice color coding as you browse items. Anything highlighted in yellow can’t be found on your computer—usually that means you uninstalled the application at some point. Anything in red has not been verified by Microsoft. If you don’t know the app, this can be a problem, but if you know something highlighted in red, it’s not bad – 7Zip for example is highlighted for me and that’s an app I’ve used for ages. Any problems. If you trust the app if it’s red, you may have nothing to worry about.

There are many tabs at the top of this app. of log on The tab I told you to use above is very straightforward – it shows you everything that opens when you log into your user account – and Everything It works as intended, showing you everything this app can show you.