Cannot restore startup entries after Windows 10 upgrade

I did two upgrades - one 10 home x86 and the other 10 home x64 - and they completed without error. The only issue I'm seeing on both of them is I can't re-enable a number of auto-starting items that I disabled before running the upgrade. I used the Ccleaner startup manager to turn them off; now when I run Ccleaner the disabled items show however when I enable them they don't stay enabled. I ran System Configuration (aka Msconfig) and it is showing "selective startup", however changing to "Normal startup" also doesn't stick. I've been able get a few of the apps to auto-start again by toggling their "start with windows" option, but the other apps don't have that setting. Uninstall/reinstall would probably fix them, but I was hoping for a simpler way.

Also I saw an antimalware service running in the task manager this morning eating a lot of cpu. I'm guessing it's Windows Defender which I don't need. Is there a way to turn it off? TIA for any suggestions :)

OK, here's what happened. Windows 10 saved the disabled startup items to a registry key which cannot be manipulated by Ccleaner. Once I found the keys I was able to replicate the startup shortcuts and then delete the old ghost keys. Now the startup items display properly in Ccleaner and on the Startup tab of the Windows 10 task manager.

Regarding turning off Windows Defender I discovered that there is already a tutorial:

Windows Defender - Turn On or Off in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Could you perhaps elaborate somewhat more about what you did, as I still do not know much about this and am still learning.

Embb said:

Could you perhaps elaborate somewhat more about what you did, as I still do not know much about this and am still learning.

Sure The key was learning that I could right-click the ghost entries in the Ccleaner Startup Manager and select "edit with Regedit". That showed me where in the registry the inactive keys were located. Then I was able to recreate the shortcuts and put them either in the user startup folder or the all users (common) startup folder. See here for more information:

http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-10&faq=28

Hope this is clear. Let me know if you have more questions.

Ah.. I understand. I have a question about how to open things in the background or silent. For Steam I would see something at the end saying -silent. How would you go about doing that for shortcuts?

Embb said:

Ah.. I understand. I have a question about how to open things in the background or silent. For Steam I would see something at the end saying -silent. How would you go about doing that for shortcuts?

Unfortunately I believe the "switch" varies depending on the application. For instance in my startup entries I see "/autostart", "/background" and "/startup" appended to some of the executable strings while others have nothing added and still load silently. You could try contacting support for your apps, or just experiment with different switches.

I'm just wondering about where you would put it. I can see it, but where in the properties section of the shortcut do I put it.

Embb said:

I'm just wondering about where you would put it. I can see it, but where in the properties section of the shortcut do I put it.

Typically the switch is appended to the end of the entry. For instance:

"C:\program files\my-program\my-program.exe" /autostart

In the shortcut's properties you will see the string which includes the path and the switch (if one is used). Note the quotation marks.

Alright, thanks.