Oh the joys of Vista.

One of its many "charming" characteristics is that it will fail at startup to run certain utilities you have installed.

It does this for your protection but when you have deliberately and consciously installed a program and it won't run, it is a total pain.

The classic example is the wonderful free "Everything" search program. After you install "Everything" Vista will simply not automatically run the program at startup. Instead it issues a warning message. The only way to start the program is to do it manually.

However Mark Wittels, one of our regular site vistors,  has found a way of getting around the problem. Here's what he suggests:

Often, when you use a third party program in Vista such as "Everything" or "Secunia PSI"  which is set to start on boot, Vista's user account control' (UAC) will block the program because it can't get a response from you to elevate access privileges. This requires you to unblock the program in response to an information balloon that appears.

The simple way to avoid this annoyance is to use Vista's "Task Scheduler" to start the program.

1. Stop the program from running at startup

You can do this by using the  "Options" or "Settings" dialog in the program you have installed and unchecking the appropriate box. If this is not available (some software uses the Registry for this purpose) an excellent program to perform this function is "Autoruns" (available from Microsoft at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx). I don't like to use 'msconfig' because it has its own nag screen which appears at startup after you make changes.

2. Run the program as a scheduled task

Click on Administrative Tools->Task Scheduler Expand the folders in the left hand pane (Task Scheduler Library). To add a new folder, highlight a folder (example Windows) and click on Actions->New Folder and give it a name.

In the right hand pane or in Actions, click on Create Basic Task (if you are an advanced user you may click on Create Task, which offers considerably more control over the task).

In the dialog box, enter a name and description, if you want a reminder, and click Next Enter a trigger, in the case of startup click the radio button 'when the computer starts' and click Next Click the radio button 'start a program' and click Next.  Enter the full path name of the program or browse to find the .exe file, click on it and click Next.

TIP: If you want to enter an argument and don't know what it might be, right click on the program desktop shortcut and select 'Properties'. The argument will be shown in the 'target' block.

The final screen will show the details of the task. Click on finish and you are done.