Monday, September 3, 2012

Adding items to your start menu on Vista when access has been 'disabled'

As a windows user it is handy to have some programs start on login, like your mail client, web browser, chat client etc. so it is nice to have write access to the 'Startup' folder in your start menu. Write access is often disabled, so here is a possible work around.

First you need to be able to see your start menu. Try mapping your C$ share:

Open explorer and tap the 'Alt' key to bring up the old menu system.
Tools -> Map Network Drive...
\\127.0.0.1\C$
Browse to the share you mounted. Hopefully your start menu is under something like:
Z:\Users\\Start Menu

OR

Z:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

Create a shortcut to the program you want to start in your 'Startup' folder and you should be good to go.

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