Erik Porter's Blog

Have your app startup when user logs in

This is simple, but I thought it was kind of neat.

Public Class Common

     Private Const StartupRegistryFolder As String = "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run"
     Private Const StartupRegistryKey As String = "PSEDesktop"

     Public Shared Property LaunchOnStartup() As Boolean
          Get
               Dim Key As RegistryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(StartupRegistryFolder)
               If Not Key Is Nothing Then
                    Dim Value As String = DirectCast(Key.GetValue(StartupRegistryKey, String.Empty), String)
                    Key.Close()
                    Return Value <> ""
               Else
                    Return False
               End If
          End Get
          Set(ByVal Value As Boolean)
               Dim Key As RegistryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(StartupRegistryFolder, True)
               If Not Key Is Nothing Then
                    If Value Then
                         Key.SetValue(StartupRegistryKey, Application.ExecutablePath)
                    Else
                         Key.DeleteValue(StartupRegistryKey)
                    End If
                    Key.Close()
               End If
          End Set
     End Property

End Class

Hopefully someone can find some use for it.  Once you have this property in your application somewhere, you can link it to a CheckBox's Checked Property or something like that to let the user decide of they want your application to launch on startup or not.