I am using Yahoo Messenger only intermittently and I am very annoyed by the fact that whenever I start it, it automatically seeds itself as a startup program in the registry - without asking me for permission - by putting an entry with the following profile:
_________________

Yahoo! Pager
Run - Startup

"C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe" -quiet
Enabled
Current User
_________________

This is not the only piece of software that behaves like this.
The QuickTime movie player inserts an autorun entry by the name of qttask.exe - I don't know what it does, but it certainly doesn't do anything that is useful to me, so I found a solution for it.
The RealPlayer does the same thing, the name of the autorun is realsched.exe - I have applied the same solution to stop it in its tracks.

As you can tell, I'm one of those people who go by the principle of "If it doesn't do something that is directly and immediately useful to me, it doesn't belong in my process list".

The solution I'm talking about consists of a small executable file that does absolutely nothing and returns an exit code of 0. I made two copies of this program, I named them qttask.exe and realsched.exe and copied the respective files into the folders where the original "perpetrator" files reside, with Overwrite-Yes. Problem solved.

But in these two cases I was able to leverage the fact that qttask.exe and realsched.exe were separate programs, dinstinct from the media players, so I was still going to be able to use the respective media players without a problem.

However, Yahoo Messenger is different. The registry entry contains the name of the useful program, but with the switch "-quiet", so I can't apply the above trick.

Does anyone know how to keep the dirty hands of Yahoo Messenger away from the registry?

Have you tried changing the preference it has built in for run on startup?

~Viz

Oh ... ummmmm ... duh!!! thanks

No problem, I know Quicktime and I believe RealPlayer also have an option like that somewhere.

~Viz

Quicktime defiantly has an option for turning startup off, under the advanced tab in the preferences! (I had to turn it off the other day)

This has always irked me also. No wonder novices always wonder why their machines get so slow after a few months of use. For Yahoo! Messenger do the following.

1. From the main toolbar click Messenger
2. Preferences
3. General
4. Uncheck “Automatically start Yahoo! Messenger” from the “when I start my computer:” groupbox

For a longer lasting solution might I suggest two solutions? The first is msconfig which is a built-in windows utility that shows every program that will load on starting. You can get to it by run > msconfig. The startup tab is usually the most useful because it lists everything that is in the registry. The Services tab should also be looked at because some of the nastier programs like to install a Windows service that starts automatically.

A second solution is Tea-Timer which is part of Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/). It basically asks if you want to allow changes to specific areas of the registry. I like to think of it as a firewall for the registry. It can get a little annoying but you will never have a startup program get into your registry unless you allow it.