Two option start-up for Wndows XP Home?

[Gerald Bramwell[_2_]]

Hi,

I'm wondering if there is a way I can get two options for start-up on
Windows XP Home.

What I want is the normal start with all normal programs and an option
to start Windows with the bare essentials and a video processing
program. At the moment I am having to spend time exiting all running
programs when I want to run the video program.

Gerald

[VanguardLH[_2_]]

Gerald Bramwell wrote:

> I'm wondering if there is a way I can get two options for start-up on
> Windows XP Home.
>
> What I want is the normal start with all normal programs and an option
> to start Windows with the bare essentials and a video processing
> program. At the moment I am having to spend time exiting all running
> programs when I want to run the video program.

Why don't you simply create another Windows (user) account? In your old
account when you login, all your startup items will load. When you use
your "game" account, it has no startup items (in the Startup folder or
deleted from the Run registry key for that user account). You would
only eliminate the startup items from the Startup folder and only from
the Run registry key for your account (under HKCU hive when you are
logged in under that account). If you eliminate the items under the
local machine Run key (HKLM hive) then they are eliminated for all
accounts, including your normal (non-game) account.

However, that only solves the problem of not loading startup items when
you select to login under your game account. Services will still load
because they load before you login. You would have to get into using
multiple hardware profiles. With multiple hardware profiles, you would
select which one to use when Windows loads (and before you login). Then
as a property of each service, you configure under which hardware
profile it will load. That means with 2 logins, one for normal use and
one for games, and 2 hardware profiles, one with all services loaded and
another with a reduced set of services, you end up with 4 possible boot
& login scenarios:

- Normal services + normal startup items (normal boot+login mode)
- Normal services + no startup items
- Reduced services + normal startup items
- Reduced services + no startup items (game boot+login mode)

You're probably better off reviewing your services and deciding which
ones should be set to Disabled so they don't load when you start
Windows. Basically you cleanup your services set to eliminate those
that you don't need or use. Then you might be able to eliminate having
to use hardware profiles. You would still use 2 different accounts for
login, so you end up with the following scenarios:

- Normal services + normal startup items (normal boot+login mode)
- Slightly reduced services + no startup items (game boot+login mode)

Just don't use Fast User Switching (FUS) to login to your game account
while you left your normal account hanging in the background. You don't
want to consume the memory for your pending normal account when you
login under your game account. Personally there is little real need for
FUS except if you're forced to share the same computer (and only in
overlapped mode where you can't sacrifice unloading all your own apps by
logging off when the other user wants to use your same host).

[John John - MVP[_2_]]

Gerald Bramwell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm wondering if there is a way I can get two options for start-up on
> Windows XP Home.
>
> What I want is the normal start with all normal programs and an option
> to start Windows with the bare essentials and a video processing
> program. At the moment I am having to spend time exiting all running
> programs when I want to run the video program.

Look into Hardware Profiles or use FSAutoStart.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/hardware_profiles.html
Windows XP Hardware Profiles - Little known goodies

Ken Salter's FSAutoStart 1.1 Build 11 Download
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5746.html

John