Startup Delayer Documentation

Current situation

Computer is secured by a 15 GB TrueCrypt volume, that includes all kinds of sensible data. Thunderbird mails, passwords, business and personal documents, keys, log-in information. If I loose the computer, the finder can use Windows, but has no access on any personal data. 

 

Putting all the data on the TrueCrypt volume has two big advantages: all my data is collected into one place, and I only need to give in ONE single password (when booting the TrueCrypt volume). Not 20 passwords in every single program.

 

Additionally after boot the state of the computer should be ‘ready to work’. All necessary programs should be loaded or started automatically.

 

The problem

As many of these programs have their data (config, ini, mails etc.) stored on the TrueCrypt 

drive, and Windows does not allow to influence the sequence of the autostart entries, some of them will start before the TrueCrypt volume is there – and therefore fail.

 

The Microsoft solution: disable all autostart entries (quite cumbersome, as many entries are not found in the standard AutoStart folder). After having booted Windows start TrueCrypt first, then all other tools/programs/drivers manually. Yes, that’s a boring mess.

 

The easy and clever solution: Startup Delayer.

Simply use the mouse and drag all items that must start after TrueCrypt from the Normal Start list into the Delayed list. Make sure TrueCrypt is the first to start. Double click on it to set the Wait property to ‘Wait until this app exits’. This will cause Startup Delayer to wait until you typed in the True Crypt password and the TrueCrypt volume exists. After that it will continue to load all other programs automatically.

 

The delayed programs in my personal setup include: PhraseExpress (includes some passwords and banking details), Total Commander (FTP log-in data), Personal Organizer/Contacts (needs to be autostarted to show reminders and dates). The last two programs to load are Skydrive and Dropbox, for the standard reason that they delay the appearance of the desktop when started too early.