On earlier Windows version such as 95 and 98, there are only a few areas where it controls a program to auto startup when Windows is booted up. There are so many now startup methods on Windows 7 and is better to rely on a tool such as Autoruns by Sysinternals. One of the auto startup method that is still being used until today is the Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run path in Windows registry located at both HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. I am very familiar with this auto startup registry path because I already memorized it more than 10 years ago when I’ve helped many friends clean viruses and trojans such as NetBus and Back Orifice from their computer. Basically any values added to that Run key will be started when Windows is booted up.
Now if you look at the next registry key after the Run key, you would find a RunOnce key. The Run and RunOnce does the same thing which is running the program when Windows is booted up but with one difference which is RunOnce only run the program once and it won’t run again at the next reboot. Usually the RunOnce key is being used to delete files that are being used by system services or locked by Explorer.
Adding a program to RunOnce is very simple. All you need to do is create a new String Value and set the full path to the program that you want to run for the value. If you don’t know how to manually edit the Windows registry or don’t want to take the risk, you can easily do so by using the free and portable tool called RunItOnce.
Simply run the RunItOnce tool and it will open a Window asking you to select the program to run once on next boot. After selecting the program, you can see that it is instantly added to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce. The only limitation on this tool is you can only add and cannot edit or delete the RunOnce keys. To edit or delete the RunOnce keys, you have to do it manually using the Windows Registry.
There are a few rules to remember when using the RunOnce key. First you will need to run RunItOnce as administrator or else it wouldn’t be able to make changes on the Windows registry and giving you the error “RunItOnce Failed for: ProgramName”. Secondly, the RunOnce keys are only ran after the user successfully logs in to Windows and before the Windows Shell is fully functional and other programs will be starting up. Finally, these keys are ignored when the computer is started in Safe Mode.
RunItOnce is a simple yet useful little tool to make our advanced computing life easier.