Is there a particular program that you want to run automatically, every time you turn on your computer? Here’s how to make that happen.

What we’re talking about today is usually the OPPOSITE of how we discuss this topic. So many programs want to insert themselves into the “startup” process when they have no business being there. I’m constantly removing programs from automatically starting up every time the computer boots up, on client computers and even my own primary PC.

But what about if you actually WANT a program to run every time you turn on or restart your computer? In some situations, that might make sense.

Here’s an example.

A while back (actually it’s been 4 years ago now), I wrote about a program that checks the health of your hard drive. It’s called Crystal Disk Info. Once it’s installed, you can run it whenever you want just to check your hard drive.

For me, I like to check my hard drive regularly – ideally, that would be every time I boot up the computer or restart it. And that is exactly what happens, using the following process.

When you install Crystal Disk Info, it creates a shortcut icon on the desktop.

Then, you hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “r”. That will open a little window with a space to type an instruction. You will type:

shell:startup 

and click OK.

That will open a new window. Now, you can just drag (or copy/paste) the Crystal Disk Info shortcut icon into that window. Done!

And you can check it by just restarting your computer. When you get back to Windows, you’ll see Crystal Disk Info pop up and give you your hard drive health report, which should look something like this:

Now you can close that window and get on with your work or whatever you need to do. It will show up every time you boot up or restart your computer.

If you want to remove anything from that shell:startup list, just open it up, right click on the item to be removed, and choose Delete.

So whatever program you want to run at each bootup, that’s the process you use.