I bought a startup's old computer from ebay and found an incredible folder

While heading to a startup's website, I stumbled upon a page that said "Please check out our blog." Since the startup was famous in the startup industry and I always love to read stories from startups, I decided to check it out. Little did I know that this blog would change my view of the world altogether.

This is the story behind an incredible folder found on a computer at a startup in San Francisco....

In the start menu, search for "shell:startup" (without the quotes).

I bought a startup's old computer from ebay and found an incredible folder in the start menu, search for "shell:startup" (without the quotes). In this folder are several folders with names that look like the names of websites I've never heard of. One of them is "Shell:Startup" which contains another folder called "Programs".

The Programs folder contains subfolders with names like "1234567890_Program". I opened one of these folders and found a shortcut file that points to another shortcut file that points to another shortcut file, etc. This goes on for several layers until finally I get to a shortcut that points to C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe /r /t 60 and other files related to shutting down Windows.

This is not normal behavior!

Drag your shortcut into that window.

Startup Folder is a simple utility that allows you to easily manage the programs that run on startup. It can be used as an alternative to the Task Manager, which is also a program that manages programs and processes that run at Windows startup, but it offers more customization options.

The Startup Folder allows you to manage any program or process that runs at startup, including ones located in the Startup folder of your Start Menu folder. You can drag any shortcut onto its window and it will automatically be added to the list of items it manages. You can also right-click on an item in its list and choose "Remove" or "Disable" from the context menu.

It also includes a few other useful features: A button to open your Start Menu folder directly in Explorer. A button to open your Startup folder directly in Explorer. A button to display all system services running on your computer (this requires administrative privileges).

Click "all programs" in the start menu and then right-click the startup folder.

I bought a startup's old computer from ebay and found an incredible folder. I have been using the computer for about a year, and I recently noticed that the computer was not running as fast as it used to be. I thought it might be time to do some maintenance, but when I opened up the Task Manager, I saw that the CPU usage was almost always 100%.

I started looking into it more and discovered that there was a lot of activity happening in a folder called "Startup". The folder contained hundreds of shortcuts, all pointing to various applications. I decided to delete all of them but one: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. This is a shortcut that points directly to the Startup folder in your Windows directory (C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs).

When you click on this shortcut, Windows displays all of the applications that are configured to start automatically when you log in.

Click "open all users" to open the startup folder for all windows 7 users.

If you want to change the startup folder, here's how:

Right-click the "Startup" folder and choose Properties. The Startup window will open.

Click "Open all users," then click Apply to save your changes.

You can also delete items from the Startup folder by right-clicking on them and choosing Delete.

In a nutshell

Amazingly, the gist of all of these findings is that most startup folders look extremely similar, with just some subtle differences. It's a reassuring thought, really—if everyone has such a similar process for setting up their startup folder, then there must be some logic underlying the "why" behind the steps.

And if there's logic behind the steps, then it must be possible to optimize them and make them even better.