placing a shortcut in user's Startup folder to start with Windows

Question

I wanted to give my user an option for "Start with Windows". When user check this option it will place a shortcut icon into Startup folder (not in registry).

On Windows restart, it will load my app automatically.

How can this be done?

Answer 1

you can use the Enviroment.SpecialFolder enum, although depending on your requirements you might look at creating a windows service instead of an app that has to start on startup.

File.Copy("shortcut path...", Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Startup) + shorcutname);

edit:

File.Copy needs an origin file directory-path and the target directory-path to copy a file. The key in that snippet is Enviroment.GetFolderPath(Enviroment.SpecialFolder.Startup) which is getting the startup folder path where you want to copy your file to.

you could use the above code several ways. In case you've got an installer project for your app, you could run something like this on install. Another way could be when the app launches it checks if the shorcut exists there and puts one there if not (File.Exists()).

Here is a question about creating shortcuts in code also.

Answer 2

WshShell wshShell = new WshShell();



            IWshRuntimeLibrary.IWshShortcut shortcut;
            string startUpFolderPath =
              Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Startup);

            // Create the shortcut
            shortcut =
              (IWshRuntimeLibrary.IWshShortcut)wshShell.CreateShortcut(
                startUpFolderPath + "\\" +
                Application.ProductName + ".lnk");

            shortcut.TargetPath = Application.ExecutablePath;
            shortcut.WorkingDirectory = Application.StartupPath;
            shortcut.Description = "Launch My Application";
            // shortcut.IconLocation = Application.StartupPath + @"\App.ico";
            shortcut.Save();