How do make programs run at startup on standard user account?

So, I use standard windows account as my main one and invoke admin account only when needed. This works great as I don't need admin rights for the majority of the stuff I do on my rig (gaming, listening to music, web browsing, etc)..however the problem is two of the programs I've installed recently won't startup with Windows when I'm logged in as a standard user. (They startup fine when I'm logged in as admin.)

I added the shortcuts to Shell:startup under standard user but no joy. Is there anyway to get this working?

Thank you.

essenbe said:

Hello Raava and welcome to the Forums. Have you tried shell:common startup ? That should open them for all users.

I believe it is located at

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp

Hello essenbe,

Thanks for the reply.
I've just tried that and it didn't work -- they still didn't startup with Windows.

I've just had a thought..is there a way to set them to be run as admin but in standard account durning startup??

essenbe said:

But, are the programs in shell:common startup selected for startup in Task Manager and are they shortcuts directly from the exe?

Yes to both. In Standard account -> Task Manager -> Start-up, they're shown as Not measured probably because they've not been able to run.

You may see if this will help you Run as Administrator in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

I've just had a quick look and I think I may need to use the Task Scheduler in this case...was trying to avoid that (since I know little about it and was hoping for a simpler approach..) but I'll give that a go once I'm back from work and report back.

Thanks for the info.

Sorry for lately reply lads (or ladies lol) but between work and gym, didn't have a chance to mess about with things till last night.

Okay, I've tried...

1. Elevated shortcuts in shell:start up and shell:common startup
2. Task schedular -- standard user account doesn't have rights to create tasks so I had to run the Schedular as admin and checked Run whether user is logged on or not
3. Created a Local User Group and assigned it full permission to both programs' exe files and added the standard user account to said group

But none of them worked

If it helps, the programs I'm trying to startup are PIA_manager and MSIAfterburner. They both (seem to) need to run at elevated access level. Right now, I'm just starting them up manually as admin...doesn't llook like there's any way around this, is there?

Callender said:

Sent you a pm. Let us know if it works.

I can't reply to your PM because I'm under the postcount threshold..
Thanks for this but it didn't work either.

Did everything as advised but Windows just seem to ignore it all lol. I don't think it likes the standard user account to be messed about this way..

Do you need to interact with these programs or just start them? If they just need to be running you can set them up as a service and this will start before any user logs on (so it doesn't matter if users are part of Admin group or not) as the service runs under local system account by default.

I do this with ThrottleStop program to undervolt my CPU so I don't need to change settings often. I also want it to start for non-admin users and this was the only easy way to do it. The only drawback is there is no notification icon but you can see it runs in Task Manager and it works fine.

To run a program as a service download the Windows 10 Creators update version of nssm from here nssm.cc/download

Configure the service by typing nssm.exe install yourservicename and pick the exe from the GUI.



You can ignore the other tabs and by default the service will then autostart every boot before logon as local system user which has full authority.

If you need to occasionally change settings in the program, stop it in services.msc, open it as normal under your user, make your changes, quit the program and then start the service again.