Beginner Builder series 75% done! will probably never be finished. :(

Sunday, February 22, 2009

StartupSaver: Faster than a locomotive!


Ok, I'm going to admit, this is my freeware. I mean, this is literally the first freeware that I've coded and felt comfortable enough to release to the public.

StartupSaver is a program designed to improve your computer's startup time and quality by executing programs at intervals. You basically choose your program, and then set the delay you want after that program, and then the same for the next, and the next, and ect. This way, when starting your computer, it won't start everything up at once, but space it out. Here's a few of the features that I thought handy and tried to incorporate:

-Import: Because if you were to switch over to StartupSaver, it would be a pain to have to get all of your items that are already on startup. So you can import items from the registry, the global registry, the Startup folder, and the global startup folder.

-Export: More of a tool outside the program, exports registry, global registry, startup folder, global startup, or StartupSaver settings (or all of the above) to TXT, REG, or even a folder of LNKs.

-Delay for SS: So you have a chance to back if you want to abort starting all the programs, you can set the delay, and show a window that has a countdown before the program launches. Also, it helps Windows get fully loaded before starting.

-Enable/Disable entries: As of v0.96, SS how has checkmarks for every entry, so if you want to disable a program without having to remove it, you can just uncheck it. The entry will stay in StartupSaver, but it will just be skipped in the lineup when starting. (Props to lanux128 of DonationCoder for suggesting it.)

-Install: Installs your choice of directory, with an option of adding to start menu, and adding to startup. Keep in mind, this is an install inside the program, so don't expect too much. Also, you can uninstall from the directory the program is running.

-Multi executable: there are two executables, StartupSaver.exe, and StartupSaverConfig.exe. StartupSaver.exe is the program itself, Config is the GUI for adding stuff. But if you want, you can delete the Config and just open the INI file and edit settings yourself. Only if you want.

-Portable as an option: If you choose not to install, if is portable. But since the point of the program is to start on startup, it has to create a shorcut in the start menu to do so...but it's still technically portable.

-Open source: For years, I've promised myself that if I ever made a program, it would always be open source. That day is here, and I'm keeping my promise. I'll always make the most recent version of StartupSaver available.

-Tiny: For all three required files, it starts at around 400kb. If you ditch the Config, it gets down to 200kb.


Is it the best program ever? No. But I had alot of fun making it, and I think it might be really useful. If you want take a look. If you leave a comment, please include the version number(ie. v0.96)...since this is StartupSaver's home, and it's probably going to be here a while. But if you do download, beware.....


-Beta: To be honest, StartupSaver is basically where I want it. But I'm not sure how buggy it is, since I've only used it on my EEE 901, with the same registry, the same screen resolution, and so forth. So in order for it to achieve "v1.0 stable" status, I need feedback! I need people telling me what I need to fix, or if it's ok! Until I actually get somebody to download it, and then post some comments (it only takes a couple seconds, yall), poor StartupSaver will stay beneath 1.0.

*I apologize for any strange messages that may pop up.....I'm still really bad at testing my programs, and really bad at taking out things that I put in to test. Let me know if that happens.








9 comments:

  1. I would really like to download and test your little app, but hotlinkfiles.com is refusing permission, could you please fix that.

    Thanks

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  2. Hey, Life, thanks for posting.

    I believe I fixed the problem. I had just entered the URL slightly wrong. Feel free to try it again. Hope it works!

    -Jon

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  3. Hi, been running StartupSaver on Vista Home basic SP1 screen res 1366x768 Acer laptop for 4 days using the default settings. No problems or odd behaviour encountered. Going to start experimenting with it soon.
    Thanks, Ken.

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  4. Thanks for the comment, Ken! I'm glad StartupSaver is working well for you! Keep me updated with any problems or suggestions you might have!

    -Jon

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  5. Could you post the source code...? ( Your 'source' link is broken. ) I play around n test a lot of ware, but only open-source...

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  6. Anon,

    Link is fixed. It's open source, I swear...even if the link goes down.... ;)

    -Jon

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  7. Hi

    Is there a way to disable programs from standard startup locations, once imported to ss?

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  8. Anonymous,

    It's in the "Future Ideas" of the Readme. :)

    -Jon

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  9. hi FREEWAREWIRE, this is the nice post and great content about this software.

    ReplyDelete