Sunday, May 5, 2013

Set Startup Programs for Delayed Start with Scheduled Task - Windows7

I leave my computer at home off when I'm at work, and I log off my work computer at the end of the day.
On my way home, or to work, I usually have a thought of "As soon as I log into my computer I need to do xyz."
However, I have all these programs that normally run in the background, and as soon as I log into my computer, they would all start and the computer would run a little slower right as I'm trying to do something I'm in a hurry for.

What I like to do, is to set all these "always on" programs, to wait until after I login to launch themselves. This also works great if all I need to do is change one setting and then reboot again, I don't have all those wasted cycles of launching a program, or an even longer delay if it needs to connect to the internet to check for an update.

While you are at it, go ahead and stagger the launches so 30 minutes in, you don't have the computer just freeze as it tries to launch several programs.

First I have the Instant Messenger program I use wait 15 minutes, Dropbox waits 20 minutes, Juice waits 25 minutes, and Hoekey waits 30 minutes. So by 30 minutes after login; everything is normal.

While writing this article I opened up my "Task Scheduler Library" and found that Google and Adobe have some programs that will check for updates at login, and then check every single hour for updates after that. I modified them both to wait 40 minutes after login to run their check for updates.

A description on setting a scheduled task to only trigger "After Logon" is on Microsoft's site:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Schedule-a-task

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