Users have to log into their computers each morning. Once logged in, they open the applications that they will be utilizing throughout the day. A timesaver that could make their day more efficient would be a policy that was configured to automatically launch a certain set of applications whenever someone logs into a computer. This could be especially useful for a kiosk machine of some kind, where numerous different people might log into it, and you wanted an application to auto-launch in the event that any user logged into that computer. Again, we won't cover the creation, linking, or filtering of GPOs from this point forward; instead, we'll focus on the settings themselves, where they are located, and how to use them. To configure an application autolaunch policy, head to the following location inside your GPO:
Computer Configuration | Policies | Administrative Templates | System | Logon
The setting that we are going to configure is called Run these programs at user logon. Set this to Enabled, and then click on the Show... button to define the applications that you want to launch when any user logs into this computer. This is not limited to a single application, as you can see here, I have created a policy that will launch both Notepad as well as Calculator:
If you look closely (on your own screen, not in the screenshot), you will see a note in the Help section of this policy setting—the ability to autolaunch applications upon login is a setting that exists inside both Computer Configuration and User Configuration. Configuring it here on the computer side means that any user who logs into this computer will see those applications open when they log in, configuring it instead on the user side would mean that the application's autolaunch settings would follow the user accounts around to the different computers where they log in. Powerful stuff!
Now that this policy is configured and linked to my LAPTOP1 workstation, when I log into it, this is the very first thing that I see without having clicked on anything. Both Calculator and Notepad have launched and are awaiting my input:
