December 25th, 2003

What order do programs in the startup group execute?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The programs in the startup group run in an unspecified order. Some people think they execute in the order they were created. Then you upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 and found that didn’t work any more. Other people think they execute in alphabetical order. Then you installed a Windows XP multilingual user interface language pack and found that didn’t work any more either.

If you want to control the order that programs in the startup group are run, write a batch file that runs them in the order you want and put a shortcut to the batch file in your startup group.

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Old New Thing
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Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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