Ok, this bugs me that people insist on putting their passwords in, disabling updates, auto-login (not that bad, unless you have a password, which defeats the point).
So, I bring you, Task Scheduler, absolutely, 100% free with windows* (amazing, I know)
*XP Might not be included, I think it is, but I can't remember the last time I tried.
First, create a task, with whatever name you want (I used Folding). Then click "Change USer or Group..."
In the next window, type in "System" and click check names, this should fix any formatting and underline it as a real user. Then click ok.
Move to the triggers tab and hit add trigger. Then under that window from the dropdown select "At startup". Make sure the "stop if task runs longer than" box is unchecked.
Now set up the actions, add a new action. This is pretty straight forward, the .exe is your folding client, arguments is the arguments you run your client with. Now, for "Start in" type in the directory you use for folding (NOTE: The system user should have read/write privledges here, this shouldn't generally be an issue, but hey, it might come up).
Lastly, settings. Actually, you can probably do these however you want, make sure to leave "Do not start a new instance" since that will make sure it doesn't interfere with itself if it somehow tries to start an extra instance. I'd recommend checking "If the task fails to start retry as soon as possible and maybe the restart if fails box. I'm not sure why I circled "force to stop" box... but it's a default, and doesn't really matter.
Tada, now folding will start even without a logged in user when your system restarts. Added benefit, you never have to see the command line again (It doesn't run on your desktop). On the downside, to stop the task you either need to open task scheduler, or kill the process (but how many of you crazies ever stopped the process, given that you don't even want to install critical security patches?
).
Also note, if you're not sure if F@H is running, and you don't have HFM installed, you can open task manager and
click show processes from all users and it will show if F@H core is running.
And lastly, it may not come up much, but if you have any programs that require administrative rights that startup with your computer, you can run them in task scheduler (Click the "run with highest privledges box on the first page) and you won't get a UAC prompt (this is how I run MSI Afterburner).
