Win 7 Pro 64 Starting a few weeks ago, after a boot, I noticed that none of the programs in my Startup folder were being run. But, it's intermittent. During the course of trying to track this down there have been short periods where it works. Roughly speaking, it'll go about 10 or 20 boots without loading the programs. Then, often with no changes since the previous boot, it'll work for 1 to 4 boots. Then I'll see another 10 or 20 fails. At the time it first happened, I thought it was correlated with a Windows Update. That was the only change I could recall from the previous boot a few days earlier. I did a System Restore at the time (was in the middle of something from work, so was going to put off researching it just then.) But, a few days later, another update came down, which installed itself along with the previous one, and threw away the Restore Point. So I couldn't go back. Again, at the time, I suspected a conflict of some kind with the updates. But, given the intermittent nature since then, I'm not so sure that those are really related. They may have been coincidence. Here's what I've tried so far: Start the programs manually. No errors. No UAC popup.Checked msconfig and downloaded and ran autoruns. Both show all the programs checked.Looking at Task Manager immediately after boot only about 20 processes are running. Normally there's an entire screenful. So, there may be other things not being fired off.Looking under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Run I see some items are running and some are not. Actual Multiple Monitors, GFI Backup and Input Director are running and visible in the system tray. Autover, Steam and WallpaperChanger are not running.After a quick skim, it appears that all of the services are running.System has been running under Avast for the life of the system. Downloaded and ran Malwarebytes. Ran Kaspersky Rescue Disk. No issues.Ran HijackThis. Recognized or researched everything.Enabled the F8 boot logging. Researched everything. Nothing stood out.Ran sfc /scannow. No errors.Ran the latest Memtest86+ (10 passes overnight) and Hitachi Disk Fitness Test. No errors.Looked at Event Viewer. No flurry of error messages about things not loading.Ran CCleaner. None of the registry warnings looked applicable.It behaves as if it thinks the shift key was being held down during login, and that flag is getting set. (But I am not seeing odd shift behavior anywhere else.) Tried a few different keyboards. Saw failed boots with each.Unplugged every USB device except for the keyboard and mouse. What I have *not* done: Someone has suggested a Startup Repair. That seems a rather drastic non-reversible step, given that it does intermittently work. I'm saving that as one of my last resorts.Someone has suggested a Clean Boot. But, given the intermittent nature, it would take a large number of consecutive successful boots to know if a particular change had an actual effect. And then more boots as I started adding things back in. I'd much rather a more targeted test.I'm toying with the idea of updating the video driver. Another user has reported that a driver update in the recent past disabled his keyboard and mouse. So, video drivers apparently are still capable of causing odd interactions. Most recently, I downloaded Process Monitor and managed to get it to log a boot. But, it's such a flood of information that I haven't been able to glean anything useful from it, yet. I've filtered/searched for Startup and can see where it's reading the Startup folder and enumerating the programs in there. But I can't figure out from what's around it if it's actually using that information. I was hoping the information is in there and that someone can help me find it. Or, I'd be interested in other suggestions on how to zero in on what's going on. Thanks, Drake Christensen

If this is happening only in the past few weeks, can you try a system restore?Janaki Hariharan

start up repair really isnt that drastic. It just rebuilds the windows files and won't touch anything else on your computer. I would suggest trying this now since you've done just about everything else that could be suggested here. I'd be interested to see the start up logs tho with proc mon. Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling steam to see if that fixed the problem? Try turning off the antivirus too for a boot and see if that helps

If this is happening only in the past few weeks, can you try a system restore? Janaki Hariharan Yes, I described trying that. After doing that, the next update deleted the restore point. So, I had nothing to go back to. Besides, that's at best a temporary solution. As illustrated, the next update produced the failure mode. And I really couldn't have risked going very long without system updates. Drake

start up repair really isnt that drastic. It just rebuilds the windows files and won't touch anything else on your computer. I would suggest trying this now since you've done just about everything else that could be suggested here. I'd be interested to see the start up logs tho with proc mon. Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling steam to see if that fixed the problem? Try turning off the antivirus too for a boot and see if that helps I understand what you mean about the Startup Repair. I'm hesitant because it's in an almost-works condition right now. I worry that a Startup Repair might make some change that would hose it completely. OTOH, it can be argued that if the system is in that bad a shape, then it's on the verge of dying, anyway. How would I get the log to you? I see five Bootlog-#.pml files in my Documents folder all with the same date and time. Which of those would you need? I just opened the first one and did a filter of "Process Name contains steam" and it came up blank. Based on that, and what I see in Task Manager, I'm pretty sure that Steam is never starting up. That leads me to think it's not the culprit. Is there another process associated with Steam that I should be looking for? Again, one problem with randomly turning things off, such as with a Clean Boot, is the number of times I would have to reboot to decide if seeing the Startup programs really is an effect of the recent change, or if it's another of the random times it chooses to work for a few boots. Anti-virus is one I might try, because it is a pretty major one. But I'm sure you can recognize my problem with this method of attack. Drake

What about uninstalling and reinstalling steam? make sure you copy your common apps folder over though, so you dont need to reinstall all your games again

Is there something in particular that makes you think it's Steam? Or, is that just a Go To suggestion? You've seen other odd issues solved by doing this? Drake

well you said it was one of the programs that was having trouble starting up. I wonder if you reinstall it if it will come up now. Then we can narrow down whats causing it.

Hi, Open Registry Editor and navigate to these locations and change each of the shell folders path to the default values as given below: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ User Shell Folders Double-click Startup and set it's data to: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup If it has no avail, please check whether this is caused 3rd party applications. You could unchecked all the startup items and services, just put a Calculator shortcut in the Startup folder to test it. Juke Chou TechNet Community Support

Hi, Open Registry Editor and navigate to these locations and change each of the shell folders path to the default values as given below: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ User Shell Folders Double-click Startup and set it's data to: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup If it has no avail, please check whether this is caused 3rd party applications. You could unchecked all the startup items and services, just put a Calculator shortcut in the Startup folder to test it. Juke Chou TechNet Community Support