Although Skype is a great program to have for communication purposes, it has its annoying sides too – and one of them is the fact that it starts up when your computer does. For very frequent users, this may be convenient, but for everyone else, it just slows down their computer when they start it up.
Thankfully this doesn’t need to be the case – you can simply disable the auto-start feature Skype has! Here’s how:
Right-click on your taskbar and select Task Manager.
When the task manager opens, you’ll have to move to the start-up tab. Select it at the top of the menu bar.
Here you’ll see any number of programs. They will depend on what you have installed and use in your system. Scroll until you find Skype. Check the Status bar – it will say Enabled. This means that it starts up every time your computer does.
To turn it off, right-click on the Skype entry and select the option Disable.
That’s all there is to it – Skype will no longer start when you first switch your computer on. You can, of course, still, turn it on via other methods. Disabling it this way does NOT uninstall the program.
Tip: Press the Windows key and type Skype, then press Enter in order to launch it quickly.
Ralph says
Need to show where the command is stored to start it. Is it in the registry, it is not, I looked, is it in the task scheduler, I have not found it yet, but it could be. I need to stop it before it ever starts it. I run the updates via a .bat file, it is an update that is activating it so before I reboot I need to know what to delete where to stop it from starting the first time programmatically so no user interaction is needed. HOW EVIL OF MS TO FORCE THIS ON US. NO APP MUST EVER START AUTOMATICALLY WITH OUT EXPLICIT USER INPUT BEFORE IT IS PROGRAMED TO DO IT!!! AND NEVER EVER VIA AN UPDATE MUST ANYTHING NEW NOT ALREADY PRESENT BEFORE THE UPDATE BE ADDED IN, NOT EVER!!!!!
Thanks for the great article, but please add more detail.