Program to Monitor Startup Programs

[Paul McDonald]

Hello,

I am looking for a small program that will monitor software that tries to add itself to the list of programs that automatically start whenever my laptop (Windows 7 32Bit) is turned on.

Preferably it would use little resources itself and run in the background giving me a pop up if something tries to add itself.

Ideally it would also give some advice on what the potential startup item does and whether it thinks it is necessary, optional or totally unnecessary etc.

Does anything like this exist in the freeware world? I can only find startup programs that you need to manually run.

Cheers,

Paul

[kendall.a]

I strongly suggest Winpatrol Free. It is a wonderful program with lots of features.

[Anupam]

I will also second Kendall's suggestion, and advice to go for WinPatrol free. Its excellent.

There are other start-up managers that you can have a look at, here :

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...up-manager.htm

Autoruns would be too difficult to manage, and understand from the above list.

About Codestuff Starter, I don't know whether it will alert you of a startup program or not, you will have to check yourself.

WinPatrol is the best though.

Another one you can try is :

Startup Monitor : http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml

I must say that none of these programs will tell you intelligently, whether a startup program should be allowed or not. Because, that type of database is just difficult to maintain for any program. Therefore, its on you to make this decision yourself. You will have to take the help of your favorite search engine for this. No other way out. Or another way is, you can ask someone who has the knowledge.