Autoruns

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Autoruns from SysInternals (who also produce the wonderful Process Explorer) allows you to see precisely what starts running when you boot your PC.

The most useful feature (to me) is that you can simply prohibit the running of a particular process by unchecking it in the processes list (see screenshot below). This way, if you see something suspicious in your list, simply uncheck it and re-boot. At some later stage, you can also opt to complete delete it from the startup list. You can double-click any item in the list and the program will launch the Windows Registry Editor, showing the relevant key.

The display is split into a number of tabs, defaulting to “Everything”, but you can limit this to “Services”, “Drivers” etc to just look in those areas.

I’ve found this in invaluable tool, especially when installing new software only to find it’s popped something in my startup without telling me. Often, it’ll be fine, but sometimes I’d like to be able to only start the installed application when I want to, not every time I start my machine.

 
Main Autoruns screen