I have a webcam program that I have to keep starting up manually every time I turn on my computer. Is there any way I can get it to run automatically on startup?

Hi Amit and thanks for your question. There are a number of options you have available. I’m going to start by assuming that you’ve already looked through the setting on the program, and it doesn’t offer you this option. A lot of programs will do this by having an option that lets them write to a section of the registry that controls startup. However, if there’s no option, this is not the way I would recommend do it. Within your Start menu you have a special folder called Startup, this is where Windows figures out what other programs need to run automatically after it has started, so I’m going to walk you through how you can add a program there.

Open the Start Menu and locate the shortcut to your webcam program. Right click on the shortcut and keep the mouse button pressed. You can now drag the shortcut around your Start menu and put it in different folders (you’ll see the folders open up as you run your mouse over them. Locate the Startup folder, move your shortcut there and let go of the button. You can then click on the “Copy here” entry that appears in a menu to create a new shortcut that will fire up your program when you start your computer.

The important thing is not to let go of that mouse button until you find the Startup folder. You’re not doing any long distance moving, just a few seconds really, so make sure you keep it pressed.