XP on a four year old computer. I must be nuts. Anyway, this is my first post, so at some point I'm gonna have to backtrack and get some other tips typed up. But for today, just a simple one that everyone else in the world probably already knows.

Quite often I have a client ask me "How do I get this to start up when I log in?" I usually shudder--every admin's worst nightmare is that machine that you come to that has every app in the sun starting on logon. The one where the client often says "Yeah, I log in and then go get my morning coffee--it's usually done by the time I get back." But most clients don't really understand why we hate this, so they stay pretty insistent.

The shell update in Windows 98 made this a little easier--being able to right click on stuff in the Start Menu meant that we could copy a shortcut to the clipboard, and then open the startup folder and paste it. But wouldn't be easier to just tell someone "Just right click on the icon, and hit "Startup"?" Well, at least for XP (and if you aren't using XP, then upgrade!), I've found a way to do this, using the "Send To" feature.

Your "Sent To" folder is in (by default) C:\Documents and Settings\. The folder contains shortcuts to applications or folders that you want to send files to. It's a piece of cake to add to your "Send To" menu--just put a new shortcut into this folder. So, if you want to be able to send stuff to your "Startup" group, just find your Startup group under C:\Documents and Settings\\Start Menu, and do a Right Click Drag to the Send To folder--choosing "Create Shortcut Here" when asked. Now you can right click on any icon in your Start Menu, select Send To, and send it right into the Startup Group.

"Wow, man I LOVE this. I want to do it on every machine. I want it for every user. But I'm lazy and don't want to manually add it each time!" Don't worry--I'm lazy too. So I've got a solution. Create a shortcut which points to "%userprofile%\Start Menu\Startup". %userprofile% is the environment variable that points to the folder that your user profile is in. In a login script, copy this .lnk file to "%userprofile%\Send To".

"Man that worked great. But I don't want to leave it in the login script--how do I make sure it's available when someone new logs into a machine?" The Default User profile is your friend--copy your .lnk file you created above into the C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Sent To folder. Now any time a new profile gets created on that box, the shortcut is put into it's Sent To folder.