Stop an Application from Running at Startup in Windows 11

Back in the old days, there were a lot of places an application could hook itself to run at startup. You had to check the registry in more than one place, as well as your start menu. With Windows Vista, there’s a built-in panel that handles all that for you.

To quickly get to this panel, you can open Control Panel, and then type “startup” into the search box. The link for “Stop a program from running at startup” shows up immediately. You could have also opened Windows Defender and fooled around with the menus until you find the right spot, but this seems quicker to me.

Add an app to run automatically at startup in Windows 10
Windows 10

Select the Start button and scroll to find the app you want to run at startup.

Right-click the app, select More, and then select Open file location. This opens the location where the shortcut to the app is saved. If there isn’t an option for Open file location, it means the app can’t run at startup.

With the file location open, press the Windows logo key + R, type shell:startup, then select OK. This opens the Startup folder.

Copy and paste the shortcut to the app from the file location to the Startup folder.You can choose to Remove or just Disable any startup item using this panel, as well as lots of other useful information so that you can see what each item is.