Which ways are there to start a program at windows startup from regedit?

Question

Well, my question is not really about a problem but more of a general question.

I know that it is possible to start an executable by creating a new registry key in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Are there other ways like this to Autorun a program? Does them require administrator priviledges?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here's some other ways to autostart programs at startup

Startup folders

You have two folders that will autorun executable in Windows. This one will start a program only for a specific user:

C:\Users\YOUR SESSION\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

And this one for all users:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp

Or you can press Windows Key + R and enter

shell:startup

for the current user, or:

shell:common startup

for all users

Task Scheduler

You can plan a task to run a program at startup (or periodically!) on your computer. You have plenty tutorials on the internet if you want it's pretty easy to setup.

Windows Service

Last option is to create a Windows Service in C#. I don't really know for this option as I try it once a while back and in the end I ended doing something else. You can look it up too on Google

Answer 2

From the regedit tool I believe you can only do like you just said.

There is a little variation if you want. Your path will only start the program for the current user.

If you want to do the same but for all users you have this path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Do you absolutely want to start an executable from regedit ? Because you have other ways to do so in Windows