Thursday, February 26, 2009

Windows Defender Startup Programs


[UPDATE: Windows Defender had all the useful functionality removed in Windows 7. So someone will have to write another application to do this all over again so Microsoft can by it for billions of dollars all over again.] 

Windows Defender has a nifty tool which allows you to see which programs automatically run at start up, in addition to looking at which programs exist in your start menu. I did notice that Windows Defender does not tell you all programs / services that have started however, because I recently installed the Pronto Edit Professional2 from Philips (for customizing/programming remotes to control devices) and it seems to start up the ProntoData.exe service but is not listed in the programs that run at start up in Windows Defender. This is a service so maybe the Windows Defender tool is only intended to list programs, not services, but seems like it would be good to list services as well.