my wife and i share a computer. she uses windows messenger. i don't. how do i get the programs she uses to not

Question

show up or start up on my profile

Answer 1

Some applications install and assume that everyone on the computer is going to use it. MSN Messenger is one of them. If you open the preferences and deselect the Start Automatically checkbox you can disable that application for your login while it will still run on your wife's account.

For other applications, it is dependent on that application as to if they use profile based controls. If the application doesn't work in profiles you can go into the registry and set programs to start for some profiles manually. You could delete the entry from:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

and add it directly to a user startup key for the current logged in user as:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

If it is for another user, you can look in HKEY_USERS but then you'd be guessing the structure as it uses a GUID rather than the user name.

Answer 2

Go to start menu, run than type msconfig .. a window will shows up, go to startup, than unmark windows messenger in there