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This entry has been published on 2017-12-14 and may be out of date.

Last Updated on 2017-12-14.

[:en]Windows 10 Fall creators update brought a new “feature” which is not useful in most cases.

By default, most (not all) applications which were opened at shutdown time are now re-opened after a reboot. In most scenarios I’ve seen yet this is not a good behaviour, because the user does not expect it. He opens the applications himself and on many systems, the re-opening procedure takes too long, so applications eventually are opened with multiple instances.

Workaround

This is a simple batch script you can use e.g. in your GPO (User configuration -> Logoff scripts). It cleans the registry’s RunOnce key from those entries.

for /f "tokens=1-3," %%a in ('reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce /v "Application Restart*" ^| findstr "Application Restart"') do reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce /v "%%a %%b %%c" /f

(This is a slightly modified snippet from the reference below, the original produced a syntax error).

Reference

 

Background

reg export HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce %temp%\regtest.reg

If you use this e.g. in a user logon or logoff script, you will see Windows creates temporary entries in the registry to re-open the applications:

 

The batch script above deletes those keys right after they have been created.[:]