Autorun the Application using C#

Bryan picture Bryan · Sep 30, 2011 · Viewed 22.5k times · Source

I want to create an application that's automatically run after booting the machine.

Can anyone help me on how can I do it on C#.

Answer

alex picture alex · Sep 30, 2011

This is how you add an app to startup:

// The path to the key where Windows looks for startup applications
RegistryKey rkApp = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run", true);

if (!IsStartupItem())
    // Add the value in the registry so that the application runs at startup
    rkApp.SetValue("My app's name", Application.ExecutablePath.ToString());

And to remove it:

// The path to the key where Windows looks for startup applications
RegistryKey rkApp = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run", true);

if(IsStartupItem())
    // Remove the value from the registry so that the application doesn't start
    rkApp.DeleteValue("My app's name", false);

And the IsStartupItem function in my code:

private bool IsStartupItem()
{
    // The path to the key where Windows looks for startup applications
    RegistryKey rkApp = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Run", true);

    if (rkApp.GetValue("My app's name") == null)
        // The value doesn't exist, the application is not set to run at startup
        return false;
    else
        // The value exists, the application is set to run at startup
        return true;
}