Services

Startup Organizer ties into the Services control panel in Windows. This allows it to display all of the services configured on the computer whether disabled or not. You can enable or disable services and start them immediately from the right click menu. Additionally you can modify other parameters of the services such as the program name. For instance my current Folding Client's name is extremely long and contains the entire path to the client. I can edit this to just display Folding 1.

Fig. 2 ... Services Screen of Startup Organizer 2.6

Another nice thing is that it can be used to delete services entirely. There is no way to do this from the services control panel in windows. I was able to delete old references to folding clients installed the old way with version 4 and "srvany". Startup Organizer warned me twice when I tried to delete something. Guess I don't want to mess anything up here!

Overall I think the presentation in this section of the program is superior to that provided by the Windows services control panel. The only drawback is that Startup Organizer does not show the program description unless you access the properties for that service.

As in other sections you can right-click and perform an "Add Program" here. You can select any other category, including other users, into which you add a program. Unfortunately, this functionality doesn't extend to letting you add a new service. Allowing users to add services could be a useful although more complex feature; perhaps it could be added in the future.

Controlled Startup

"Controlled Startup" is supposed to be one of the major selling points for Startup Organizer. It is a way to control the order in which your programs start when your computer boots. By moving startup programs into Startup Organizers' Controlled Startup category you can then set an order for them by hitting the + or - keys or by right-clicking. This is useful if you want to make sure your security applications like your virus scanner and firewall are the first to start. As you can see by the screenshot each program is assigned a number to specify the order in which it starts.

Fig. 3 ... Controlled Startup Order

Another feature of Controlled Startup is the ability to have a short delay between each program starting. The number is customizable in the Options menu and is specified in seconds. The program does not accept non-integer values for this option.

Controlled Startup would be more useful, at least to me, if I could specify time delays for each program individually. One program that I start takes over a minute to get going and consumes most of my CPU resources during its startup process. It might be useful to me to give other programs a chance to get going first and then have it on a time delay before starting anything else.

The Controlled Startup section actually works by setting a ctrl.exe program to run invisibly after login. This mini-program then loads sequentially each program in the Controlled Startup list. The whole process is basically invisible to the user. The only thing you might notice is the different order in which your programs may pop up on screen.

Another feature of Controlled Startup is the ability to set hotkeys which disable startup items after your login. Once you log in, hold down the key selected in the Options menu to choose whether to start items in the Controlled Startup section. You can specify two keys. One tells ctrl.exe not to load any programs and the other tells it to prompt before loading each application. This ability does not work with services.