Stop apps from re-opening after shutdown/restart- 1709 Fall Creators

I came across this new behavior a couple days ago and thought I did something screwy to my image. I read Bree's post and found it's an intended feature now on a restart Fall Creators Update reopens apps from before

That thread has some good suggestions for alternate shutdown methods. The intention of this tutorial is to restore pre-1709 (like) functionality to the normal Restart and Shut down buttons in the Start menu.

Since the default reboot behavior uses the shutdown.exe slash G switch - applications that are left open will attempt to "register" themselves to be re-opened. This is done by creating a RunOnce value at logoff, so you won't see it while online. Not all apps are capable of registering themselves in this way and can't be re-opened automatically.

In the below screenshot I have left a few programs open, shutdown the computer, then booted to WinPE and loaded my HKCU hive in regedit. You can see the apps that are going to be re-opened once I boot back up, each named like "Application Restart".


The script below will remove every value starting with "Application Restart #"

Code:

$HKCURunOnce='HKCU:Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce'
(Get-ItemProperty $HKCURunOnce).PSObject.Properties | 
Where-Object {$_.Name -like "Application Restart #*"} |
ForEach {Remove-ItemProperty -Path $HKCURunOnce -Name $_.Name}

You can set this as a user logoff script in gpedit or gpmc, or use the attached scripts:

-Extract "NoApplicationRestart.zip"
-Run "NoApplicationRestart_INSTALL.bat"

I have tested this with Enterprise and Pro, not sure if Home supports the group policy side of it all. You will need local admin permission to make the required changes.

I remove all startup entries at shutdown and RadeonSettings.exe still started, only using shutdown command helped.

TairikuOkami said:

I remove all startup entries at shutdown and RadeonSettings.exe still started, only using shutdown command helped.

How are you calling OFF.bat? If by "remove all startup entries at shutdown" you mean it is a Shutdown script (like below), that won't work.



The "Application Restart" RunOnce values get created after a Computer Shutdown script is run. You need to run it as a User Logoff script instead. I have an AMD card as well but don't seem to have RadeonSettings.exe installed to test that specific application. You should inspect your offline registry after shutting down to confirm what your batch file is actually accomplishing.

EDIT: Thinking about it some more, Computer Shutdown scripts are run as the System account. So the reason that method doesn't work is because the wrong HKCU hive is being targeted. I'd still be curious to know how you are running your batch.